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HISTORY STORIE 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 



FOR USE IN 



ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 



BY 



W. H. CAMPBELL 

PRINCIPAL OF THE D. S. WENTWORTH SCHOOL, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK CHICAGO 






Copyright, 1910, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Copyright, 1908 

BY THE 

FIELDING BALL PUBLISHING COMPANY 



(gCU25976 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 
1. The Physiography of the State 9 

II. The Early Inhabitants 25 

III. The Coming of the French — Marquette and 

Joliet 32 

IV. The Story of La Salle 46 

V. French Occupation of The Mississippi Valley . 59 

VI. ' The Transfer of the Valley From the French 

to the English 71 

VII. The Northwest Territory Passes to the United 

States 82 

Story of George Rogers Clark. 

VIII. From the Revolution to Statehood — 1783-1818 . 95 
The Fort Dearborn Massacre 

IX. Acquiring Title to the Soil 109 

X. The State Constitutions 113 

XI. Constitutional Boundary and Divisions . . .118 

XII. The Capitals of Illinois . 127 

XTII. Evolution of the Illinois School Law . . . .131 

XIV. Slavery in Illinois .... 135 

XV. The Black Hawk War 141 

XVI. The Mormons in Illinois 156 

XVII. The Illinois and Michigan Canal 164 

XVIII. The Advent of the Railroads 170 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 
XIX. State Educational, Charitable and Penal In- 
stitutions 175 

Semi-Educational Institutions 176 

The Penal and Reformatory Institutions . . 177 

XX. Some of the Men Who Made the State . . . 179 

XXI. The Making of Chicago . . . . . . . . 192 

. The Chicago Water System 203 

The Chicago Sewerage System 208 

Industrial Life in Chicago . . . . . . .213 

The Public Buildings 219 

The Park System 221 

City Government in Chicago . . . . . 222 

The Elevated Roads .224 

The Chicago Subway 224 

XXII. Starved Rock 227 

XXIII. A Land Flowing With Milk and Honey . . . 236 

XXIV. A Word in Conclusion 243 

Chronological Table . 245 



PREFACE 

The stories about Illinois grouped together in this 
little book were used by the author in several classes 
before he had any thought of putting them into print. 
At the suggestion of a number of teachers who, doubt- 
less with more good will than critical judgment, be- 
lieved they might be as acceptable to other pupils as 
they had proven in the classes observed, the task of 
preparing them for the printer was undertaken and 
completed. 

The work has been done in the midst of a multitude 
of other duties which forbade more than an hour or 
two of continuous attention, A book produced under 
such circumstances must show many marks of haste, 
lack of close connection in places, unfortunate choice 
of phraseology and, perhaps, some mistakes in state- 
ments of facts. The above explanation is our apology 
for these faults. 

It is hoped that the book may be useful as supple- 
mentary reading matter in the seventh and eighth 
grades of the grammar schools, and helpful to those 
who are preparing to teach, and that it may also be an 
aid and incentive in the hands of the teachers of the 
lower grades for doing some oral teaching in the most 
interesting study of our own state geography and his- 
tory. 

In the preparation of this book thousands of pages 
have been read covering all the readily accessible sources 

5 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

of information upon the Illinois country. It would 
be easy to compile a much larger book and any one 
else would doubtless make a different selection of topics, 
but it seemed to the writer that for the purposes in- 
tended the subjects selected cover the ground briefly and 
completely and emphasize the important epochs in the 
history of the state. 

For the facts contained in these pages we are ''debtor 
both to the Greeks and to the barbarians "; to the cul- 
tured essays and papers of such men as Mason, Caton 
and Parrish, and to the rude stories told by the fron- 
tiersmen who occupied the prairies and timbered val- 
leys of La Salle County, where as a child we became 
familiar with the endless reaches of waving grass and 
corn and listened with open-eyed wonder to the fire- 
side stories of early deeds of daring and privation. 
We are particularly indebted to Secretary of State 
James A. Rose for permission to reproduce for these 
pages some of the maps which appeared in the Blue 
Book, prepared under his supervision and through 
which many of our dates and facts have been verified. 
We also wish to acknowledge our indebtedness to the 
Central Scientific Company, from whose relief maps, 
prepared by Mr. C. E. Siebenthal, photographs for the 
maps of the Chicago plain were made. The map illus- 
trating the route of Black Hawk was reproduced, with 
permission from McClure's Magazine, illustrating Tar- 
bell's Life of Lincoln. The cuts of the State Capitol, 
Chicago River, Steel Mills of South Chicago, Dekalb 
Normal School,- and Black Hawk are furnished through 
the courtesy of Rand, McNally and Company, from 
their Illinois edition of the Dodge Geography. The 
map of Chicago used in Chapter XXI, will be recog- 

e 



PREFACE 

nizecl as belonging to the Tarr and McMarry Geography, 
by the courtesy of whose publishers, the Macmillan 
Company, it appears. 

The preparation and arrangement of these stories has 
been a source of great pleasure, and their presentation 









The D. S. Wentworth School, where these stories were made and 
first told to the boys and girls of the eighth grade in 1905-6. 



to the classes of boys and girls in the D. S. Wentworth 
School, where they have been tested, has been among 
the most enjoyable experiences w^e have had in the class 
room. 

Believing that the stories of heroism and consecration 
to duty that gather about the prairies and river valleys 
of Illinois are as interesting and as worthy a place in 
the pupils' book of remembrance as are the more dis- 
tant and vague stories of foreign lands and Atlantic 

7 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

coast colonizations, we send this little book out without 

any great anticipations yet with the hope that it may 

find a place and welcome awaiting it in the schools of 

the state. 

W. H. Campbell. 

D. S. Wentworth School, 

Chicago, Illinois, March, 1908. 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

CHAPTER I 

THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE 

When we speak of a man, of what do we think? Is 
it of his body and head and hands and feet ? Or is it of 
his mind and power to think and speak ? Or is it of his 
disposition and habits and social life ? Now it may be of 
any one of these or of all combined in the one person. 
We have many ways of thinking about the same person. 
But under all our thoughts, giving to them clearness 
and meaning, is the physical man. So close is the rela- 
tion between mind and body that whatever affects one 
reacts upon the other. We expect to find a strong vigor- 
ous mind in a strong vigorous body. Habits of life that 
tend to weaken or destroy muscle and nerve tissue leave 
their impress upon the mind. Somehow our mental and' 
spiritual forces are interwoven with the flesh and blood 
and nerves of the body. So true is this that when a 
man's thoughts are being presented to us we would like 
to see the man. It is not enough to hear the words; we 
want to see the form, we want to hear the utterance. 

What is true of the term "man" is equally true of the 
word "state." What is a state? Is it a certain number 
of square miles of hill and valley and plain? The state 

9 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

of Illinois elected a governor. What elected him? The 
hills and valleys? 

"What constitutes a state? 
Not high raised battlement or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate ; 
Not cities fair with spires and turrets crowned. 

No: — Men, high-minded men, 
With powers as far above dull brutes endued, 

In forest, brake or den. 
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude — 

Men who their duties know, 
Know too their rights, and knowing, dare maintain." 

The people make the state. 

Then again we think of the state as a hive of industry, 
— ^its shuttles flying, its locomotives whistling and 
puffing, its mills blacking the heavens with their smoke, 
its cattle, its coal, its grain entrained for distant points, 
— and it is the industrial forms only that we see. Yet 
it is true that no matter whether it be the people in their 
sovereign power speaking through their laws and suf- 
frages, or whether it be the courts speaking in the name 
of the sovereign people, or whether it be the industrial 
and commercial spirit, or whether it be its historic past, 
— under it all giving clearness and understanding is the 
physical make-up of the state, — the hills and valleys 
shut in by certain well defined and legalized limits. All 
the life of the state is so interwoven with the natural 
features that we must come back to them for our final 
anchoring place, — for our reason why. 

The physiography of any country affects the char- 
acter of the people. Sublimity and beauty of scenery 
inspires to full expansion of lungs and to force of circu- 
lation. Dullness and monotony cramps and stunts. The 

10 



THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE 

ancient Greeks among their hills and near the bound- 
less sea, and the Swiss amid their towering mountains, 
are fair illustrations of the effect of nature upon a 
people. 

If this be true, it is well worth our while to study the 
physical make-up of our state and to become somewhat 
acquainted with its general form and sources of 
strength before attempting to read the incidental stories 
and tales that have woven themselves around these hills 
and vallej^s of Illinois. 

One of the most marked physical facts that presents 
itself when we come to study the maps and the charts is 
the comparatively low altitude of Illinois. Its average 
height above the sea is six hundred thirty-two feet. 
That of Indiana is seven hundred feet ; of Missouri, 
eight hundred feet ; of Michigan, nine hundred feet ; of 
Wisconsin, one thousand fifty feet; of Iowa, one thou- 
sand one hundred feet. If we erect proportional lines 
to indicate this we shall have a series somewhat as 
follows : 





^ 






r1 


u! 


u. 


ul 


LL 


Vl. 


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IOWA WIS. MO. ILL. IND. MICH. 

Diagram Showing Comparative Altitudes. 



When the tops of these lines are connected we see 
what a basin Illinois seems to form among the adjoining 
states. What would be the natural inference from this 

11 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 



lay of the land ? The. rivers from all sides are 
toward this state. Of the boundary line, five 
fifty miles is made by the Mississippi, three 
miles by the Ohio and Wabash and sixty miles 
Michigan. 

Not only does the state have a long extent 
boundary, but it has numerous rivers within 
territory. The following outline will show at 
the principal streams with their outlets: 



directed 
hundred 
hundred 
by Lake 

of water 

its own 

a glance 



f St, Lawrence — Lake Michigan. 



Drainage 
System. 



f Apple. 
Plum. 



( Calumet. 
\ Chicago. 



Rock. 



( Pe( 
{ Kis 



Mississippi. -| 



Pecatonica. 

shwaukee. 
Green. 
Edwards. 
Henderson. 

fDes Plaines 
Kankakee. 
Fox. 

Vermilion. 
Spoon. 
Mackinaw. 
I^Sangamon. 
Kaskaskia. 
Big Muddy. 

( Cache. 
^ Ohio. \ Saline. 

Wabash, i 



Illinois. 



Little Wabash. 
Embarrass. 



This outline at once suggests that the state is well 
watered and well drained. A region of country so sup- 
plied with streams, and their many tributaries, can have 
no place for desert sections. It suggests also that there 
must be a number of natural valleys and divides. A 
glance at a relief map of the state shows this to be true. 

During the early geological periods the various layers 
of rock were formed and in the many changes that 
occurred were partly washed away. In the process of 
formation these layers of early rocks were slightly wrin- 
kled by pressure and in places lifted up a little above 

12 



THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE 

the average level of the surrounding section. As we 
cross the state in different directions we find the out- 
croppings of these partially worn formations standing 
out from the drift and soil which cover most of the sur- 
face of the state. On the Rock river, near Oregon, we 
find an outcropping of the St. Peter's sandstone, which 
gives to that region a most picturesque and attractive 
scenery. There is probably no section of the state in 
which the natural scenery is more inviting than in the 
neighborhood of Oregon. On the Illinois river, around 
Ottawa, there is another outcropping of this same sand- 
stone, giving another region of unusual variety and 
beauty. Starved Rock, Deer Park, and the many beau- 
tiful caiions of La Salle county are all formed in the 
St. Peter's sandstone group. At Joliet and near Rock 
Island and in Calhoun county, and in several other 
localities, we find decided exposures of the Niagara lime- 
stone group. In other places we find the sub-carbonif- 
erous and the carboniferous, bearing coal, exposed to 
view. In all parts of the state if borings are sunk deep 
enough these early rocks may be found. 

Why do not these rock formations show in all parts 
of the state ? "Why is it that in most places, in digging 
for water, we have to bore through many feet of sand, 
gravel and boulders before coming to the bed rock? In 
many places this layer on top of the main rock is thirty 
feet deep ; in some places it is from one hundred to one 
hundred and fifty feet deep. How did all this come 
about ? This introduces us to another view of the phys- 
ical make-up of the state. 

Long after the first rock formations had been laid 
down, after they had many times been lifted above the 
waters and sunk again, after the lower Silurian lime- 

13 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

stone around Galena had been filled with lead, and the 
fields covering the central parts of the state had been 
stored with sufficient coal to keep all the fires of the 
world burning for centuries, there came a great change 
over the face of the earth. No man knows exactly how 
or why it came about, but it grew very cold. For 
hundreds of years the plants and animals that had 
flourished where we now live were frozen out. Nothing 
could grow in all this northern region of the world. A 
cold barren reach of ice and snow gradually covered the 
land. It grew heavier and thicker, collecting upon the 
high lands of Canada and the regions to the north as 
it now collects upon the highest parts of the Alps in 
Europe, or of the coast range in our own Alaska. These 
great fields of ice, as they grew larger and heavier, 
began to move slowly towards the lower lands. As they 
moved down they pushed all obstructions before them. 
A grove of trees was less than a cobweb in their path. 
A projection of rock sticking up from the surface a 
hundred feet or more would be ground into fragments 
and carried along with the great ice mass moving toward 
the south. This great ice plow not only swept the sur- 
face bare as it went, but it dug into the earth, carving 
out holes hundreds of feet deep and thousands of miles 
in area. The rocks it carried along were rolled over and 
over again under the great ice mass until they were 
ground into huge marbles or boulders. 

But this ice march could not go on forever. There 
must come a place where the heat of the sun was suffi- 
cient to melt the front edge of this ice field. In Illinois 
this place was reached about sixty miles north of Cairo. 
Here the ice began to melt, and the dirt and gravel and 
sand it had ground up and carried along were dropped 

14 



THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE 

upon the old primary rock formations. Where the 
glacier stopped, all along its front end, a ridge of gravel 
and clay was built up and left. It is there to-day, so 
we can stand upon it and compare it with 'the land 
north and south of it, and know for ourselves that we 
are stajiding upon soil brought down by this great ice 
wagon from the north. Not only once, but twice and 
three times, perhaps oftener, did this happen, except 
that each time the front edge of the ice river stopped 
sooner than the time before. So over the northern part 
of the state three, at least, of these great glaciers swept 
covering the old rock in places very deep. This is why 
we have to dig through sand and gravel and boulders 
so many feet before striking the solid rock. This is why 
boulders, almost round, from six inches to five feet in 
diameter, can be found scattered over the surface of the 
state. This is why, chiefly, that we have Lake Michigan 
and' all the other northern lakes. The great holes 
scooped out by the moving ice fields were filled with 
water, when the glaciers melted, and there they are 
to this day. 

The loads of dirt carried were in some cases dropped 
in the beds of old rivers, filling them up so completely 
and solidly that when the glaciers were gone things 
had been so changed that the rivers had to dig out new 
channels. This was true of the Mississippi river near 
Rock Island and for forty or more miles below that 
point. This was true of the Illinois river near Henne- 
pin. Many other cases can be shown where this hap- 
pened. In places these terminal moraines formed 
basins, the dirt being piled up on all sides, thus shut- 
ting in thousands of acres of land. These areas could 
not get drainage and became the swamp lands that our 
2 15 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 



farmers are still draining with tile. In some of these 
basins the hest kind of soil has been deposited by 
growth and decay and the small streams seeping into 

them until now, 
when drained by 
the farmer, they 
are the richest 
lands to be had. 
There are farm- 
ers i n northern 
Illinois who are 
reaping sixty 
and seventy 
bushels per acre 
from fields in 
which they went 
duck hunting or 
swimming when 
they were boys. 

It is now time 
for us to look at 
a map of the 
state upon which 
these moraines 
are located. We 
see that the first 
moraine extends 

westward from 
Moraines of Illinois. , , . , 

near the point 

where the Wabash river leaves the Illinois state bound- 
ary. This moraine has been called .the Shelbyville 
moraine. You notice the Embarrass river has cut 
through it in order to reach its natural outlet. The 

16 




THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE 

second moraine is shaped something like an elbow, 
reaching from the eastern part of the state a 
few miles north of the Shelbyville moraine bending to 
the north at about the forty-first degree of latitude, 
and ending in the state of Wisconsin. This is known 
as the Champaign moraine. This is by far the largest 
and most prominent one in the state. You notice how 
the Illinois river has cut its way across this moraine. 
The third follows Lake Michigan and is located only a 
few miles to the west of its southern part. This is 
called the Valparaiso moraine; the Des Plaines river 
had to cut its way across it. Should we take the 
Illinois Central railroad at Chicago and travel to Cairo, 
we would cross the Valparaiso moraine, then the valley 
drained by the Kankakee and Vermilion rivers, then the 
Champaign moraine, then, following the ridge that 
divides the Embarrass from the Kaskaskia, we would 
enter the basin of the Big Muddy river, and in this basin 
would come to and cross that southern uplift known as 
the Ozark Highlands. South of these highlands there 
is no drift. This Ozark ridge of hills is not more than 
ten or twelve miles wide, but reaches across the state 
from Shawneetown on the Ohio to Grand Tower on the 
Mississippi. In places the elevations reach an altitude 
of seven or eight hundred feet, and in one place to one 
thousand forty-seven feet. 

One other little section of the state seems to have 
been left untouched by the great ice rivers. This is the 
extreme northwestern part of the state, a little corner 
comprising Jo Daviess county. Here we have the high- 
est point of land in the state, Charles Mound, which 
rises to an altitude of twelve hundred fifty-seven feet. 

A study of this map will show us that there are seven 

17 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

distinct drainage basins in the state. These are drained 
respectively by the Rock river, the Illinois river, the 
Kaskaskia river, the Big Muddy river, the Embarrass 
river, the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and Lake Michi- 
gan. Perhaps the smallest of all these areas is that 
drained by the lake. In the ice age the waters from 
the lake region poured out through the Illinois valley 
to the Mississippi, and thence to the Gulf. But as the 
height of the waters sank, the little elevation to the 
west cut the waters of the lake off in that direction and 
forced them to find an outlet by way of the north. The 
Chicago drainage channel has opened up this old water- 
way, giving the waters of Lake Michigan an outlet to 
the Gulf. 

In the places where the drift material was not de- 
posited, the old rock formations are at the top, making 
rugged scenery and furnishing picturesque building 
sites. In many such places even the abutments for 
bridges can be spared, as the natural formation gives 
ample support. We find the drift in other sections 
piled up in great mounds, as if done by hand. Joliet 
Mound, near Joliet, was a good example of this until 
the Rock Island railway company decided a few years 
ago that the material was needed for ballast. Where 
this drift covers the state, canal digging and railroad 
building can be done with comparative ease. There 
seems to have been considerable regularity in the 
deposition of the drift. It did not all drop' down in a 
heap, but the heavier parts settled down first, then the 
lighter were deposited layer after layer, something as 
the leaves of a book. 

In an early day the waters of Lake Michigan filled 
all the plain where the city of Chicago is now built, 

18 



THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE 

reaching to the edge of the Valparaiso moraine. In 
the midst of these ancient waters, Stony Island and 




Ancient Chicago Plain. 

Blue Island were spots of dry land, — oases in the desert 
of waters. As the waters receded, the lake shrunk 

19 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

toward its present outline, and room was made for the 
building of the great city of the West. 




Present Chicago Plain. 

There are vast regions of Illinois almost as level as a 
floor. There are thousands of acres from which the 

20 



THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE 



first farmers did not have to cut a tree nor dig a stump 
before putting the plow to work. The natural drain- 
age with the wonderfully rich soil marks out these 
great reaches of prairie land as one of the best agricul- 
tural regions of the earth. An immense population 
could be supported from the fields of this state. 

We will look at another map before passing from this 
part of our subject. The storm maps of the United 
States show that most of the storms, the winds, the 




rains, the changes of temperature, follow three well- 
defined routes. One of these clings to the Atlantic 
seaboard. Another, beginning in the southwest, crosses 
the country diagonally to Maine. This route crosses 
Illinois along the Kaskaskia valley. The third begins 
in the Pacific ocean, or in the mountain regions of our 
Northwest, and crosses the country in an easterly direc- 
tion to Maine. This route crosses Illinois in the latitude 
of Chicago. You notice that there is no state except 

21 




Average Annual Temperature in Illinois. 

22 




Average Annual Rainfall in Illinois. 
23 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Illinois that is crossed by two of these storm routes until 
we reach New England. This will help us to under- 
stand why Illinois has such a variety of weather and 
perhaps more sudden changes of temperature than any 
other state in the Union. 

We should examine, also, two other charts, one show- 
ing the average temperature and the other the average 
rainfall for the state. In all such charts the same tem- 
perature is represented by very crooked lines. The 
altitude, the conformation of the drainage basins, the 
forests and prairies and the amount of rainfall all have 
an influence upon the temperature. Hardly any two 
places are exactly alike in these respects, so we should 
not expect to find many places alike in temperature 
records. In the extreme northern part of the state the 
average temperature is forty-six degrees, while in the 
extreme south it is fifty-eight degrees. This is a differ- 
ence of twelve degrees and means a difference of about 
three weeks in the season. 

On the chart showing the average rainfall we will see 
that there is quite a variation, reaching all the way from 
twenty-eight to forty-five inches per year. The average 
for the state is about thirty-eight inches. 

Now, we have attempted to get before us the physical 
outlook of the state, showing how it was made, of what its 
bone and muscle consist, whence its soil came, how its 
moisture and drainage are provided, and the conse- 
quent possibilities of this region for civilization and 
culture. "We have seen what nature has done for this 
region. What has man done to perfect her work? 



CHAPTi^R II 

THE EARLY INHABITANTS 

This was a beautiful prairie land reaching far and 
far away beyond the power of the eye to see. Miles and 
miles of it were almost as level as a floor. The drainage 
was nearly perfect. There was enough of timber to give 
variety to the landscape and to furnish the necessary 
building material for a moderate population of simple 
people. The soil left by the glaciers and added to by 
the natural growth of vegetation was as rich as a garden. 
Surely such a field as this was destined to a history of 
stirring events and of industrial life. 

What people first owned these lands, and how came 
they to leave them, and by whom were they succeeded? 
The native inhabitants were Indians. When Columbus 
added the western world to the geography of the middle 
ages, in 1492, he found a land that w^as beyond value in 
its resources and in its possibilities; but the people 
acquired with the land were of little value to the world 's 
history. They have been the means of putting to shame 
the records of Spanish, English and American explorers, 
colonists, and statesmen whose hands have been drenched 
in the blood of innocent savages, and whose treaties 
have been violated with impunity because made 
with these helpless children of the forest. But they 
have been a hopeless problem in all efforts to civilize 
them. They have not the inherited instincts of the 

25 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

white man, and do not want to live as the white man 
lives. They were in possession of these boiuidless plains 
and interminable woods from Maine to California and 
from the Gulf of Mexico to the frozen regions of 
Alaska. They had their own institutions, their own 
manner of life, and their own religious beliefs and 
superstitions, as simple as the life they lived. They 
had their families, their tribes and their great clans, 
distinguished one from the other, as were the nations 
of Europe, by differences of dialect, language and 
customs. 

There is no satisfactory evidence that any race of 
people preceded the Indians in the occupation of this 
country. Some years ago the scientists thought there 
had been an older race of people, whom they called 
Mound Builders, who had erected great mounds in 
many sections of the country. These mounds still exist, 
such of them as have not been destroyed, most of them 
in river valleys not far removed from the streams. This 
one fact suggests a possible explanation of their origin, 
— they may have been devised for the purpose of pro- 
tecting the people from the great overflows of the rivers, 
which were probably much greater than now. We have 
seen one of these mounds some twelve miles or more 
from the usual channel of the Mississippi river in Mis- 
souri, built upon with corn cribs, barns, sheds and 
dwelling-house, the only spot above water for a distance 
of five miles in any direction. The farmer had taken 
advantage of one of the old Indian mounds for the 
same purpose for which the Indians had erected it, — to 
keep himself above the Mississippi overflow in the month 
of February. Many of these mounds have been found 
to contain skeletons, pottery and various other things, 

26 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS 



and from the remains found scattered about, a sort of 
culture, religious and industrial, had been supposed and 
defended. Nothing, however, has been found and 




Distribution of Land in North America Among the Three Classes 

of Indian Tribes. 

nothing proven that might not apply to the Indian 
tribes as they were in the olden times. 

A glance at a map will help us to understand that 

27 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

at the time of the earliest white occupation of the 
country, North America was peopled by three great 
classes or grades of Indians. To the extreme north 
and west, beyond the Rocky mountains, were the savage 
nations. These lived wholly on the results of the chase 
and the streams, with what fruits and roots they could 
gather. They made no pretense at cultivating the 
ground, nor did they have any of the conveniences of 
life. To the east of the Rocky mountains, extending to 
the Atlantic and to the Gulf of Mexico, were the bar- 
barous tribes. These depended not alone upon the 
hunt and the streams, but made some rude attempts 
at cultivation. They grew fields of corn and beans 
and tobacco. They gathered their harvests and stored 
the grain for winter use. They used the bow and arrow 
pointed with flint, or hurled the spear, similar3.y 
pointed, in the chase or in war. For pastime they 
danced around their camp-fires, or their young men 
ran races or played at games of ball on the open fields. 
These were the Indians with whom the English and 
French had to do in this country. To the southwest 
and extreme south, reaching through Mexico and Cen- 
tral America, were the half-civilized races. These had 
a much higher degree of civilization. They had a 
system of counting and writing. They kept records of 
events and had a rude astronomy. They were skilled 
builders in stone, and some of their structures are the 
wonder of antiquarians to-day. These were the races 
with whom the Spaniards came in contact in Mexico 
and whose land they overran and whose civilization 
they destroyed without appreciating it. 

We see, then, that the Indians who occupied the 
country where we live were of the barbarous races. 

28 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS 



These Indians belonged chiefly to three great families 
or clans. These were the Iroquois, whose principal lands 
were in New York; the Algonquins," who covered an im- 
mense territory reaching from Labrador to the Missis- 
sippi, completely surrounding the Iroquois; and the 
Sioux, the latter living chiefly west of the Mississippi. 
Each of these families were divided up into a number of 
tribes. I n Illi- 
nois we have for 
the most part the 
tribes of the Illi- 
nois, the Miamis, 
Pottawattomies, 
Kickapoos and 
Winn ebagoes. 
All these except 
the Winnebagoes 
belong to the 
great Algonquin 
family. The 
Winn e b ag'oes 
were of the Sioux 
family. Of all 
the Indians i n 
North America, 
the Algonquins 
were the most 
amenable to civ- 
ilization. The 
Sioux were the 
most warlike and 
unapproachable. ,. . 

rr,. -, ^ Settlements of Indian Tribes in Illinois 

1 hey have always in 1700. 

29 



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ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

been a proud, warring people. Sitting Bull, who lead 
his braves to the massacre of General Custer's little 
army a few years ago, was a Sioux Chief. 

A couple of maps showing the arrangement of the 
Indian tribes of Illinois in 1700 and again in 1760 will 
illustrate how they shifted from place to place and how 
the tribes seemed to shrink as war and the need of 
protection and food came upon them. Notice the 
territory of the Illinois tribe in the two maps. The 
Sioux sometimes crossed the river and made war upon 
the more peaceable Algonquins on the Illinois side. 
The warlike Iroquois from near Lake Ontario often 
took the warpath and, trailing the forests for more 
than five hundred miles, slaughtered the tribes in the 
valley of the Illinois and laid their fields waste, leaving 
their villages but smoking ruins. 

It was a cruel way of life, but it was all they knew. 
To this life they had been born, and their fathers for 
generations had known nothing better, nor did they 
wish for any other. They were willing to live their 
rude lives, much of the time in hunger and cold, and to 
die under the scalping knife or under the dreadful 
torture of the stake. In these valleys of the Rock 
river, the Illinois, the Kaskaskia, the Big Muddy, the 
Embarrass, and in the Chicago plain, the smoke from 
hundreds of little Indian villages rose to the clouds, 
and along these streams the rude savage caught his 
fish or his game, and here the squaws tilled the fields of 
squash and. Indian corn. Here they chased the buffalo 
and the deer, and after the successful big hunt in the 
autumn they had their dances and feasts lasting for 
days at a time. Here their children grew to manhood 

30 



THE EARLY INHABITANTS 



and womanhood, 
their sons and 
daughters were 
married and 
given in m a r- 
riage. The cra- 
dle and the grave 
were there as 
they are with us, 
to mark the two 
most eventful 
epochs in a hu- 
man life. The 
Indian had his 
way of looking 
at it as we have 
ours. 

Thus the In- 
dians of Illinois 
had been living 
for hundreds of 
years, and thus 
they were living 
in 1673, when 
the first glimmer 
of a new day and 
a different form 
gave promise of 




Settlements of Indian Tribes in Illinois 
in 1760. 



of life fell across their valley and 
marvelous changes. The palefaces 
reached the Illinois country, and with their coming, 
history really begins. Whence came the first white 
men to these valleys? Who were they and why did 
they come? 

3 31 



CHAPTER III 

THE COMING OF THE FRENCH — MARQUETTE AND JOLIET 

During the years 1541-1543 four historic events were 
taking place in different parts of North America which 
we may link together for the sake of memory help. 
.DeSoto was wandering across the southern wilderness, 
battling with wild beasts and still wilder men, probably 
penetrating as far as the present boundary of Kansas, 
finding in all his journeyings nothing so wonderful as his 
burying-place — the Mississippi river. Coronado, coming 
up from the northwestern part of Mexico, was searching 
for the marvelous city of Quivera, which existed only in 
diseased imaginations. In his dreary wanderings he 
came within a few hundred miles, perhaps within a few 
days' march, of DeSoto 's men. On the Pacific coast, 
Cabrillo, a third Spaniard, had discovered the shore 
line of the present California, and, wintering in the 
harbor of San Diego, had died there. Away off to the 
northeast, Cartier, sailing up the St. Lawrence river 
to the present site of Montreal, attempted to plant a 
colony. Cartier failed in this attempt but the French 
had entered upon the plan of colonizing, and they are 
to be dealt with in our history as an active force for 
a period of a little more than two hundred years. 

In 1608 a permanent settlement was made at Quebec. 
After three-quarters of a century, the French were at 
last firmly planted upon the soil of the New World. 

32 



THE COMING OF THE FRENCH 

In 1611 they established themselves at Montreal. With- 
in the next sixty years they went up the Ottawa river, 
crossed by portage to the Georgian Bay, and then to 
the Sault Ste. Marie rapids, where in 1641 they estab- 
lished a mission among the Indians and a post for the 
fur traders. Then they went on to the west, establish- 
ing another post at Pointe es Sprite, near the south- 
w^estern extremit}^ of Lake Superior, in 1665. Other 
posts were, established at Mackinac in 1669, at St. 
Xavier, on Green Bay in 1669, and at Frontenac in 
1673. Dotting these places on our map, we shall see 
that the French during these years were exploring the 
region of the Great Lakes and were making the natural 
waterways the means of communication and travel. It 
is at this point that we in the Illinois country come 
into intimate touch with these exploring French. 

It will be interesting to follow with our map and 
pencil the development of the posts and forts established 
during the next three-quarters of a century. In 1679 
we find Ft. Miami at the mouth of the St. Joseph 
river on Lake Michigan ; in 1670, Ft. Crevecoeur where 
Peoria now stands ; in 1682, Ft. St. Louis near the 
present town of Utica, Illinois ; in 1695, Kaskaskia ; in 
1717, New Orleans; in 1735, Vincennes; in 1753, Le 
Boeuf, Venango, Ft. Duquesne, and other establish- 
ments in the neighborhood of the Great Lakes. (See 
map, page 84.) 

We have not named all the places where these enter- 
prising Frenchmen pushed their way among the In- 
dians, erecting their chapels, setting up their crucifixes, 
and building huts for the accommodation of the traders. 
Jt must not be supposed for a moment that these settle- 
ments stand for the same thing that the Pilgrim or 

33 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Puritan settlements of New England stand for, or those 
of Virginia and Carolina. Far from it. Yet they were 
way stations in the great valley of the Mississippi, 
planted upon all the routes of travel, and here were 
the lilies of France giving notice to all the world that 
Frenchmen had taken possession of this valley and 
claimed it as their own by right of original discovery 
and exploration. 

The most prominent and the most lovable character 
connected with the explorations of the Middle West 
was the heroic Father Marquette. His is one of the 
lives untouched by selfishness and untainted by greed, 
that stands out like a great promontory in the sea of 
passion and cruelty and scheming that swept over the 
New World during the first centuries of its history. He 
was molded of the material of which martyrs are made. 
He never desired ease or fame. He loved humanity 
and wild nature. He lived as he had hoped to live, and 
finally died as he had prayed to die, far from the 
habitations of men, in the midst of the interminable 
forests beside the water ways leading to the Great Lakes, 
his face turned toward heaven, and only a few faith- 
ful converts to mark his passing. 

Father Marquette was born near Paris, in France, in 
1637. He came of a warlike family among the wealthy 
and noble of his time. He chose the priesthood for his 
profession and was educated in the schools of the 
Jesuits, a strict religious society belonging to the priest- 
hood of the Catholic church and devoted to the spread 
of their faith in all parts of the world. This society 
was organized about 1535, and from that day to this, 
wherever the Church has needed a man to take des- 
perate chances, — on the frontier, in the wilderness, in 

34: 



THE COMING OF THE FRENCH 

battle, in slavery, beside the king's throne, or at the 
martyr's stake, — she has but to suggest, and there were 
men of this order waiting to do or die. Father Mar- 
quette belonged to this order and at the age of twenty- 
nine was set apart for missionary work in the wilderness 
of the New World. 

In September, 1666, he reached Quebec. Here he 
reported to his superior and thanked God that he was 
at last so near the field of work which he had been desir- 
ing for years. But much was needed by the young man 
before he was fully equipped for his work. In a few 
days he was sent up to Three Rivers, about seventy- 
five miles above Quebec, where he was placed under 
the instructions of an experienced teacher and mission- 
ary. Here he remained for three years, getting ready. 
He had to learn Indian languages and dialects; he had 
to learn how to provide himself with food in the wilder- 
ness, how to make rude huts and shelters, how to cook 
his own food, how to paddle canoes and swim swollen 
streams, and how to make his own clothing out of such 
material as the forest furnished. There was much be- 
sides books for this young priest to study, and he gave 
himself unflinchingly to the work. 

In the summer of 1668, Father Marquette was ready 
to go farther toward the frontier to make proof of the 
spirit that was in him. He set out with a small party 
for the station at Sault Ste. Marie, near the mouth of 
Lake Superior. Here there was a mission, as we have 
noted on our map. This seems to have been the most 
important station west of Montreal. They w^ent up the 
Ottawa river by canoe until opposite Georgian Bay, 
and carried their canoes across the portage to the bay, 
and then paddled along the shores of the lake until they 

35 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

reached the mission at the Sault. This journey of nearly 
nine hundred miles probably occupied most of the sum- 
mer of 1668. A year later, September, " 1669, we find 
Marquette again on the move. This time he was sent 
to take charge of the mission at Pointe es Sprite, or La 
Pointe, near the southwestern extremity of Lake 
Superior. In about two years after his arrival at this 
place, the Indian tribes with whom he had labored were 
obliged to abandon their homes and flee from the in- 
vasion of warring tribes with whom they had become 
involved in quarrels. The mission was abandoned and, 
with the Indians, Marquette turned eastward and 
located on the island of Mackinac near where the waters 
of Superior find their entrance to Lake Huron. Here 
a misson station had already been established; a short 
time afterwards it was removed to the mainland on the 
north shore and was called St. Ignace. The thousands 
of tourists and visitors who every summer visit these 
straits and wander over the ground made memorable 
by the labors of these early missionaries, try to dream 
over the records suggested by the scanty markings and 
monuments, wondering what manner of men these must 
have been. 

On December 8, Marquette, here at the mission of St. 
Ignace, received the most joyful message he had heard 
since landing in the New World. Upon that day, just 
as winter was closing in, a lone traveler drew his birch- 
bark canoe up on the beach beside the mission station, 
and, meeting the priest, placed in his hands a message 
from the governor of Canada. This traveler was Joliet, 
and this day the names of Marquette and Joliet were to 
be joined for register and transmission side by side to 
coming generations. 

36 



THE COMING OF THE FRENCH . 

Joliet was the son of a wagon maker. He had been 
born and reared in Canada. He had studied for the 
priesthood, but after a time had given up this plan for 
the more adventurous and fascinating life of an ex- 
plorer. He was an unusually bright and capable man. 
His ability won the esteem and regard of all Avith whom 
he came in contact. He was brave, fearless, energetic, 
resourceful — an ideal man for explorations among the 
wild men of an unbroken wilderness. 

For years the governor of Canada had been hearing 
rumors of a great river to the south and west of the 
lakes, and he was desirous of knowing more about it. 
It was uncertain whether this river emptied into the 
Pacific or into the Atlantic. The country to the east 
of it was known as the Illinois country because the 
Illinois Indians were living along this river. It came 
about that, acting under orders of the French king who 
was anxious to discover this unknown river, the govern- 
or of Canada sought to find some one who could lead 
an expedition into the wilderness for this purpose. He 
selected Joliet, the son of the wagon maker. 

It was important to have in every exploring party a 
priest. This was important for several reasons. The 
church and the state were acting together as one in 
this work of opening up the New World. The priest 
was usually familiar with the Indian languages and 
dialects, and could thus act as an interpreter; he was 
known by his dress among all the tribes of the great 
valley, because where he had not been his fame had pre- 
ceded him, and the ''black robes" were known as the 
medicine men of the palefaces. Joliet had known Mar- 
quette in the early claj^s at Montreal and at Three Rivers, 
and the two had formed a liking for each other. It was 

37 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

greatly to his delight that Father Marquette was named 
to accompany him on this trip. ^ 

It was this commission that Joliet placed in the hands 
of the priest on that eighth day of December, 1672. 
Marquette had for years been looking with longing eyes 
toward the Illinois country. He had prayed that it 
might be permitted him to go forth as a pioneer mis- 
sionary among these people, carrying them the gospel, 
living and dying among them. Upon this night his 
prayer was answered, and Marquette was happy. He 
had never been a rugged man. He had the physique of 
a scholar and a civilian rather than that of an explorer, 
and so it came about that the life to which this message 
consigned him was to lead to an early grave as the re- 
sult of exposure and over-exertion. 

All winter Marquette and Joliet were making their 
preparations for the journey. They gathered all the 
information they could about the country, its people, 
its languages and its streams. On the seventeenth of 
May, 1673, a little group of people gathered on the 
beach at St. Ignace to see the two depart. They took 
with them five oarsmen to propel their boats. With 
Joliet in one boat and Marquette in the other, after 
the prayers and blessings of the priest on shore, the 
boats were pushed out and the eventful voyage was 
begun. 

They followed the west shore of Lake Michigan to 
Green Bay. Entering this, they proceeded to the 
mission station of St. Xavier. Here they rested a 
while with the priests and people of this mission ; then, 
pushing on, they proceeded to the head of Green Bay, 
then up the Fox river to Winnebago lake ; then, branch- 
ing off to the west, they followed the Fox liver until 

38 



THE COMING OF THE FRENCH 

they came to the large Indian village of the Mascoutees. 
They had heard much of this village, and it was here 
they expected to receive information concerning the 
peoples and the lands they were to visit. They found 
the savages friendly and ready with information giving 
definite location to the great river which flowed away 
to the south, they knew not how far, but stated that it 
was beset with great monsters and that its banks were 
inhabited by blood-thirsty tribes that would permit none 
to pass. They tried to persuade the adventurers to re- 
turn the way they came, but, failing in this, they readily 
supplied guides to show them the way over the portage 
to a river which they said would flow into the great 
river. A short journey brought them to the river 
sought; it was what is now known as the Wisconsin. 
Here they held a religious service, then embarked, and 
in a few days, — on June 17, — they floated out through 
the mouth of the Wisconsin upon the bosom of the great 
river, the Mississippi. Perhaps these were the first 
Europeans since the days of DeSoto (1541) that had 
looked upon the waters of the great river. The dis- 
covery of DeSoto had been forgotten, so we may well 
say these men w^ere the discoverers of the river, coming 
upon it at the mouth of the Wisconsin. 

We cannot follow all the known details of this 
journey, but on the twenty-fifth of June they saw tracks 
on the west bank of the river. Joliet and Marquette 
landed, and after following the tracks for five or six 
miles across a beautiful prairie, they came to an Indian 
village. Calling aloud for some one to come out, they 
were answered by a swarm of savages who sent four of 
their old men to meet them bearing calumets, or peace- 
pipes. Marquette asked them who they were. They 

39 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 



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40 



THE COMING OF THE FRENCH 

replied that they were Illini, which in their language 
means "men." By this name they were ever after 
known, and the name has come down to our state, and 
many times, under a more cultured civilization, the pale- 
faces have acted less like men than did these primitive 
red men of the prairies. Leaving this village, Mar- 
quette and Joliet proceeded on their journey, with many 
interesting incidents, until they had gone as far as the 
mouth of the Arkansas river. Here, fearing that the 
tribes along the shore might do them harm, and finding 
that some of them had firearms, and believing that they 
had determined the course and outlet of the great river, 
they decided to return. On their upward journey, 
when they reached the mouth of the Illinois river they 
decided to ascend it and attempt to get back to the lakes 
in that way. Marquette wrote that in all their wander- 
ings they had seen nothing like this valley of the Illinois 
"as to its fertility of soil, its prairie and its woods; its 
cattle, elk, deer and bustards, ducks and beavers." 
After more than two hundred years, we who live upon 
the produce of that valley agree most fully with his 
estimate of its riches. 

Below Ottawa, near the present site of Utica, they 
found a village of Kaskaskia Indians. They spent some 
time here and were furnished with guides to conduct 
them by the best route to the lake. They ascended the 
Illinois, then the Des Plaines, until they came to the 
divide which separates the Des Plaines valley from the 
lake, and, carrying their canoes over the ridge, were 
again able to paddle upon either the Chicago or the 
Calumet river — we are not sure which — to Lake Mich- 
igan. The travelers at once pushed for the north along 
the western shore of the lake, past the present, sites of 

41 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Evanston, Racine, Milwaukee, and on and on until they 
reached Green Bay and, at the end of September, pulled 
their worn canoes up at the mission of St. Xavier after 
an absence of little more than four months. 

What a journey they had made ! What a record to 
carry back to the governor of Canada and to send home 
to the French king ! Joliet could not go back to Canada 
during the winter, so he worked on his report. Mar- 
quette also wrote out a report of their expedition. By 
the irony of fate, the next spring, when he had reached 
within a few miles of Montreal, Joliet was capsized in 
his canoe, his crew were all drowned, and he barely 
escaped with his life, while his precious manuscripts 
were lost forever. So no written report of the itinerary 
could be made by him, and it was not until some years 
after that the report made by Marquette was obtained 
and published in France. Joliet does not seem to have 
been rewarded in any adequate way by the French for 
his wonderful achievement, and in history to this day 
his name is regarded as second to that of Marquette in 
the discoveries and explorations in which they shared. 
So this man, burning for fame and public recognition, 
was passed by, while the humble priest, who desired 
neither fame nor recognition, became the chief authority 
in this world-wide story. 

With the fortune of Joliet we have nothing more to 
do, but we shall follow Marquette a little longer. When 
they left the Kaskaskia Indians on the Illinois river, 
Father Marquette had promised them that he would 
return to them to teach them the gospel. He was very 
anxious to return as soon as possible. But the exposure 
on the trip had so broken his health that it was im- 
possible for him to start at once upon another journey. 

42 



THE COMING OF THE FRENCH 

Spring came, and he hoped that with the warmer 
weather he would grow stronger, but the days of sum- 
mer came and went, finding him still at the little mission 
station at Green Bay. But in the autumn he thought 
he had sufficiently recovered to undertake the journey. 
So in October, with two Frenchmen for companions and 
guides, he set out upon the trip. They slowly pulled 
their canoe along the shore, the priest walking much of 
the time, to vary the monotony and to relieve his sickness, 
which returned upon him and seemed worse in the 
cramped position in the boat. Finally, upon the fourth 
of December they pulled into the Chicago river, which 
was frozen to the depth of half a foot. Here Mar- 
quette was so much worse it was impossible to go 
farther. Making a rude sledge, his companions, aided 
by some friendly Pottawattomies, drew him over the 
ice to a place about five miles from the shore of the lake, 
and here, building a rude hut for shelter, they decided 
to winter. So here, upon the very site of our Chicago, 
out somewhere on the west branch of our river, this 
great man, heroic in his courage and faith, passed the 
dreary winter of 1674-5, far from his home and far 
from even the rude conveniences of life, yet happy and 
serene, waiting for what might yet be in store for him 
to do or endure. When spring came Marquette was 
better and they proceeded slowly upon their way. They 
spent eleven days in reaching the Kaskaskia village. 
The people here received him with every demonstration 
of joy. He taught them for a few days, establishing 
among them the mission of the Immaculate Conception, 
then calling them all together in the open air upon the 
plain, he preached to them his farewell sermon and 
gave them his parting advice and blessing. He felt that 

43 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 




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THE COMING OF THE FRENCH 

he had only a few weeks longer to live, and wished, if 
he might, to reach St. Ignace in time to die. Many of 
the Kaskaskia Indians accompanied him almost to the 
lake, showing him every token of love possible to their 
rude natures. Crossing the portage to the Chicago 
river, they entered the lake, and, in order to reach St. 
Ignace, they paddled around the southern end of the 
lake and up its eastern shore. The journey w^as slow. 
Father Marquette was daily growing weaker. Near 
the spot where the city of Ludington, Michigan, now 
stands, they pulled their boats to shore. It was the 
good father's last landing. About midnight, sheltered 
by a rude hut of bark, gently talking and praying with 
the men who had been his companions, he quietly passed 
away. It was May 18, 1675. The next spring, some 
Indians, to whom Marquette had preached the gospel 
way over on the west end of Lake Superior, came to his 
grave in the woods and disinterring the body, cleaned 
the bones after the Indian fashion and reverently 
carried them to the mission of St. Ignace, where they 
found resting-place in the little chapel. 

We have spent so much time upon this narrative be- 
cause it seems that here we have a character that 
measured up to the full height of a type among the 
missionary explorers who opened up the interior of this 
country to civilization and settlement. No one, young 
or old, can study the life of Marquette without profit, 
and to us who live in the valley of the fertile rivers and 
along the great lake which his canoe threaded in his 
weary journeys, his name and life should be household 
themes. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE STORY OF LA SALLE 

Father Marquette died on the eighteenth of May, 
1675. His bones had been lying for four summers 
under the little chapel where his loving followers had 
placed them in 1676, when one bright autumn morning 
the people of St. Ignace were startled by the appear- 
ance of a ship with sails approaching the beach. 
Savages, missionaries and traders gazed in astonishment 
at it as it swept proudly up to a place of anchorage. 
Then a discharge of cannon from her sides sent the 
frightened savages off on a run for shelter from this new 
engine of destruction which thus announced the advent 
of a floating fortress upon the Great Lakes. On board 
this ship were two of the most remarkable men ever sent 
from France to the New World. These men were La 
Salle and his Italian-born lieutenant, Henri de Tonti. 

It would be too long a story to tell of all of La Salle's 
experiences in Canada and around the lakes and rivers 
east of Michigan. Let it suffice to say that he came to 
Canada in 1666, the same year as Marquette. He had 
been educated for the priesthood but had chosen to turn 
aside for the life of an explorer and trader. He had 
probably discovered the Ohio river, and had possibly 
gone as far as Michigan, and perhaps had been on the 
Illinois river before we meet him on this September 
morning casting anchor on the beach at St. Ignace. He 

46 



THE STORY OF LA SALLE 

was one of the most Tinfortiinate men in all history. 
From the time we are first introduced to him until the 
day of his death his ill-fortune seldom varied. In all 
his career, from 1666, when he first landed in Canada, 
until 1687, when he was assassinated by a faithless 
follower in the swamps of Texas, we read of a con- 
tinuous series of disasters. He seems to have been 
gifted with the fatal quality of making enemies of all 
with whom he came in contact, except the wild Indians 
of the forest. Even the rosy, fat priest. Father Hen- 
nepin, whom he brought with him on this expedition, 
turned against him, lied about him when living and 
attempted to steal his laurels when dead. His brother, 
another priest, annoyed him, obstructed him, followed 
him from place to place, and in the last scene of his 
career was little better than an accomplice in his death. 
Yet, in spite of financial disasters, of the desertion by 
friends, of losses by fires and floods, of wanderings 
through trackless forests and amid freezing swamps 
for days together; in spite of sickness and of enemies, 
of betrayals and shipwreck, this remarkable man per- 
severed in his original purpose until he had threaded 
this vast country from the St. Lawrence to the mouth 
of the Mississippi back and forth several times, handing 
down to the future a record of endurance and heroism 
which his own times could neither understand nor 
appreciate. So far as is known, the only two human 
beings who were true to him in life and in death were 
his trusty lieutenant, the Italian Tonti, and his faith- 
ful Mohegan hunter, Nika. 

At Niagara, just above the falls, La Salle had built 
his ship, the Grijfon, of forty tons ' burden, and provided 
her with five cannon. He intended to use her to aid in 
4 47 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

carrying on a trade in furs along the Lakes and to 
convey the supplies he might need from Canada to the 
foot of Lake Michigan. The great enterprise he had 
on his mind was to follow the Mississippi to its mouth, 
then to establish a line of forts and settlements from 
the Lakes to the Gulf, gathering the Indians into a 
great confederacy for trade. It was a great scheme. 




The Building of the Griffon. 



If the jealousies of white men had been no more bitter 
than the enmities of the red men, he might have accom- 
plished his purpose within a few years. 

The Griffon had brought her first load successfully to 
St. Ignace. Here she took on what furs the agent of 
La Salle had stored at that place, thence proceeded to 
Green Bay, where she received sufficient furs to load 
her. At this place La Salle turned her over to the pilot 
to be taken back to Niagara, where she was to be un- 

48 



THE STORY OF LA SALLE 

loaded, and taking on new supplies, was to meet him at 
the foot of Lake Michigan. 

On the eighteenth of September, 1679, the Griffon 
turned to the east on her homeward trip. La Salle 
never saw her more. Whether wrecked in a storm, 
sunk by accident or design, the prey of the elements or 
of his enemies, La Salle never knew. Her valuable 
cargo was lost. 

With the things they had taken from the Griffon for 
use in their trip, they loaded their canoes and, dividing 
into two parties, started down the lake. La Salle was 
to go by the western shore of Lake Michigan, along the 
same route taken some years before by Marquette, while 
Tonti with most of the men was to go by the eastern 
shore. They were to meet at a point designated near 
the foot of the lake. La Salle journeyed down the lake, 
passed the Chicago river, and, skirting the shore-line at 
the end of the lake, arrived at the mouth of the St. 
Joseph river. Here he should have met Tonti, but it 
was twenty days before Tonti arrived after a very dif- 
ficult journey down the lake. While waiting, La Salle 
built a fort, called Fort Miami, at the mouth of the St. 
Joseph. This was to be his way station between the 
Illinois country and the head of the Great Lakes. They 
waited here long enough for the Griffon to put in an 
appearance, but as she did not come. La Salle deter- 
mined to proceed as they were. Going up the St. 
Joseph river until they came to the bend, they shoul- 
dered their freight and their canoes, and in this way 
crossed the portage to the sources of the Kankakee river. 
There were thirty-three in the party at this time. 

It was on the third day of December, 1679, that they 
set out for the Illinois from Fort Miami. After reach- 

49 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

ing the stream of the Kankakee their journey was not 
very difficult. The country through which they passed 
was attractive and pleasant, but at this time of the 
year game was scarce, so they suffered for food part of 
the time. In a few days they were floating between 
the bluffs at the present site of Ottawa, where the Fox 
river empties into the Illinois. Soon they came to the 
beautiful plain where Utica now stands, bordered on the 
south by high bluffs, the most notable point of which was 
the great rocky bluff known to us as Starved Rock. Here, 
spread out on the plain, was an Indian village. Hen- 
nepin says he counted four hundred and sixty lodges. 
They were made long like covered baggage-wagons, each 
one of them housing several families. A framework of 
poles was covered by woven mats, and the interior was 
divided into parts for the different families by stretch- 
ing mats across from side to side. An open place in 
the center was left for the common fire, and a hole in 
the roof permitted a part of the smoke to escape. 

When La Salle and his party landed at this village, 
during Christmas week of 1679, not a sign of life could 
be seen. There were the houses and all the indications 
of a populous town, but the people were not to be found. 
They had gone, as was their custom, upon their annual 
hunting expedition. La Salle was in need of food, and 
was much disappointed at not finding the Indians. 
They hunted about until they discovered the place 
where the Indians had buried their corn. La Salle took 
what he needed, leaving in its place hatchets, beads and 
other things to pay for the corn. They then pushed on 
down the river. On the first of January they reached 
Peoria Lake. Along this lake he met some of the 
Indians belonging to the village beside the rock. He 

50 



THE STOEY OF LA SALLE 

explained what he had done in taking the corn, and 
satisfied their demands. He gained permission from 
the Indians to build a fort and a ship on the river, but 
they were not very friendly, and, fearing to remain 
among them. La Salle took his men a little below the 
lake, and there on the bank of the river selected a spot 
on a slight elevation upon which to erect his fort. This 
fort, built of logs and surrounded by a palisade, he 
called Crevecoeur, the fort of the broken heart. He 
had given up all hope of hearing from his ship, the 
Griffon. He learned through a messenger that his 
creditors were seizing his property in Canada, and his 
men about him were growing discontented and sullen. 
It Avas a dark time, and Crevecoeur was a fitting name 
for the fort, the first built on the soil of Illinois. It was 
better named than he even then dreamed. 

Six of his men had already deserted. He began 
building a large boat, expecting to sail it down to the 
Mississippi and thence to the Gulf. This kept his 
people busy. He decided to return to Canada for 
additional supplies. In the meantime he decided to 
send Father Hennepin upon an exploring expedition 
down to the mouth of the Illinois and thence up the 
Mississippi. The adventures of Hennepin were thrill- 
ing and entertaining. Had he been honest, his name 
might have come down to us only second to that of his 
great leader in the expedition. 

It was the third of March, 1680, when La Salle started 
on that long journey of fifteen hundred miles through 
the pathless wilderness with no one to guide him. With 
his Indian hunter and four Frenchmen, the journey was 
begun. The river was frozen^ so most of the way they 
had to carry their canoes or drag them over the snow. 

51 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

At the village by the Rock he found the people still 
absent, but he examined the location of the Rock and at 
the first opportunity sent word back to Tonti to occupy 
the place and build a fort on its top. On March 23rd 
they reached the mouth of the Calumet river, and on the 
24th the mouth of the St. Joseph, where he found two 
men awaiting him in the fort. Here he learned of the 
total disappearance of the Griffon. He sent these two 
men on to Tonti with word to fortify the Rock while he 
pushed on to Canada. 

On this trip many times they were forced to wade 
through snow waist-deep for days together. Sometimes 
they were obliged to sleep for several nights in succes- 
sion upon the open prairie with nothing with which to 
build a fire. Their clothes, wet with rain and snow, if 
taken off for the night, froze stiff so they could not put 
them on in the morning. Yet in sixty-five days from 
starting they drew up at Fort Frontenac. 

We shall not pursue the details of La Salle's experi- 
ences with his creditors nor his efforts to get money and 
supplies. It was enough that he succeeded, and on the 
tenth of August, with twenty-five men, started back for 
the Illinois country to join Tonti. This time he went 
by the way of Georgian Bay and the Straits of Mack- 
inac. When he reached his fort at the mouth of the 
St. Joseph he found it destroyed. He heard rumors of 
a war party of Iroquois Indians. He hastened on to 
find Tonti, fearing he might have met with disaster. 
They made their way down the Illinois river as rapidly 
as they could. Where it had been so quiet on their 
previous trip they now found a multitude of living 
creatures. The prairies were filled with herds of buf- 
faloes. Wild game was abundant on every hand. They 

52 



THE STORY OF LA SALLE 

came to the Rock, but La Salle looked in vain for some 
sign of a palisade or other indication of Tonti's work. 
They came to the village of the Illinois ; here destruction 
of the worst type presented itself. Every hut had 
disappeared. Nothing but the blackened and burned 
remnants of the poles of the four hundred and sixty 
huts remained to tell that a great village had been there 
only a few weeks before. 

Worse than that, they found the ground covered with 
the bodies of the dead. Even the graves had been 
broken open, and the bones had been scattered about and 
the skulls set up on stakes. They looked in vain for 
signs of Frenchmen among the dead. Leaving three 
men hid with most of their supplies, La Salle, with the 
rest of his party, pushed down the river. They found 
that the Illinois had retreated down the west side of the 
river, while their enemies, the Iroquois, had followed on 
the opposite bank. Their camps had been made oppo- 
site each other as the retreat progressed. They came 
to Fort Crevecoeur. It also was in ruins. There were 
no signs to tell them what had become of Tonti. 
They continued their way down the river. Near its 
mouth they found that the Illinois had abandoned their 
women and had fled. The Iroquois had captured some- 
thing like a thousand women and children. Many of 
them they had tied to the stake and killed with horrible 
torture. Some of them they had eaten. The awful 
scenes were on every hand. La Salle continued until, 
on the sixth day of December, 1680, they floated out into 
the Mississippi. This was the first La Salle had seen of 
the great river of which he had dreamed by day and 
night through so many weary months. But he could 
not stop now. He must needs return at once; the ruins 

53 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

behind him must be repaired, and the lost Tonti must 
be sought. On the eleventh of December he was back at 
the ruined village beside the Rock. Here they found 
the three men they had left with the supplies, and, 
collecting a quantity of half -burned corn from the ruins 
of the village, they started on their return up the 
river. On the sixth of January they reached the junc- 
tion of the Kankakee with the Illinois, and here La Salle 
discovered in the woods a piece of tree that had been 
cut with a saw. He was delighted, as he understood 
from this that Tonti must have passed this way and 
was probably safe. The river was frozen, so they left 
their canoes and proceeded on foot toward St. Joseph. 
It was very cold. Snow fell nineteen days in succession 
as they waded across one hundred and twenty miles of 
open prairie. They were half starved and almost worn 
out when at last they reached Fort Miami, where they 
found one of La Salle's lieutenants with twelve men who 
had reached this place and were awaiting some word 
from him before advancing. They had repaired the 
fort and had gathered plenty of fuel and provisions, but 
they had heard no word from Tonti. 

What had become of Tonti ? When La Salle left him 
the previous March his men at once became mutinous. 
They had lost faith in the success of La Salle, and did 
not believe they would ever get pay for the time they 
had put in with him. Some of them deserted, while 
others were surly and discontented. Then came the 
word from La Salle to fortify the Rock. Tonti set out 
to do this with part of the men, leaving the others at 
the fort. No sooner was he gone than part of the men 
deliberately dismantled the fort, threw the forge and 
tools into the river, destroyed everything they could, 

54 



THE STORY OF LA SALLE 

and left the place. The three or four trusty men left 
hurried up the river to inform Tonti. Tonti made a 
trip down the river, recovered the forge and part of the 
tools, and carried them back to the village by the Rock. 
To avoid all suspicion on the part of the Indians, Tonti 
took up his residence in a hut in the midst of the 
savages. Here he brought all that was left of their 
supplies, and here, with his half dozen companions, lived 
with the Indians during the summer. 

Early in the fall, without warning or suspicion, an 
alarmed scout brought word to the village that the 
Iroquois were coming, only a day's march away; and, 
what was worse, he reported that they were led by 
Frenchmen and that one of the leaders was La Salle. 
Tonti did all that he could to convince them that it 
could not be true, and offered to go out with them to 
fight the Iroquois. The angry Indians sacked his hut, 
took all his supplies, including the forge and tools, and 
threw them into the river. By great tact and courage, 
Tonti saved the lives of his party. But the Iroquois 
w^ere at hand; the attack was made. Tonti rushed in 
between the contending hosts and tried to bring about 
a cessation of the fight. After a parley with the Iro- 
quois an agreement was reached ; but when the Iroquois 
found what an easy victory they might win, they were 
very angry, and broke the treaty, telling Tonti and his 
companions to leave the country at once. Tonti could 
do no more for his friends ; they were doomed to certain 
defeat; so, stealing quietly away with a canoe, they set 
off up the river to find La Salle. Unfortunately, they 
went by the way of the Chicago river and Green Bay, 
while La Salle was on the opposite side of the lake. 
Months afterward they met at Michillimackinac, 

55 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

It would seem that La Salle was ruined and that he 
would give up in despair. But he was not thus made. 
His courage was beyond measure. 

On December 21, 1681, we find La Salle and Tonti 
with a party of twenty-three Frenchmen and about a 
score of Indians once again starting from Fort Miami 
for the Illinois country. He had been carrying on 
negotiations with the various Illinois tribes, trying to 
persuade them to settle again at the old village, while 
he should fortify the Rock and act as their protector 
against the Iroquois Indians. He was now starting out 
to fulfill his part of the agreement. It was the dead 
of winter, and their canoes and luggage and the sick 
had to be placed on sledges and dragged over the snow. 
Thus they crossed the site of Chicago and the divide 
between the lake and the Des Plaines river. They 
reached the site of the Illinois village, but found it still 
deserted. They proceeded on down the river, past Fort 
Crevecoeur and on to the Mississippi, and then on and 
on, and still on, until on the ninth of April, 1682, their 
boats passed out of the river into the surging waters 
of the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle had attained his long- 
desired dream. He had followed the great river, of 
which all Europe had heard so many rumors, to its 
mouth. He divided his party into three sections, and 
each taking a different branch, all came together at the 
mouth of the river, proving that it emptied into the 
gulf by at least three channels. Here La Salle with 
great ceremony took possession of the country drained 
by the great river and all its tributaries in the name of 
King Louis of France, and named the valley Louisiana. 

Then began the journey back up the river, leaving 
behind them a post upon which had been nailed the 

56 



THE STORY OF LA SALLE 

arms of France pounded out of an old copper kettle. 
On the way, La Salle became sick from a fever and had 
to stay for months at an extemporized fort, Prud 
Homme, near the present site of Natchez. He sent 
Tonti on to go to Canada to report the result of his 
venture and to see that an account was sent to the king. 

In December of the same year, 1682, La Salle and 
Tonti were at the village of the Hlinois. Here they 
carried out the original purpose of fortifying the Rock. 
They brought all the supplies they had or could gather 
to the Rock, erected a fort on its top, and surrounded 
it with a palisade. The Indians, gathering confidence 
because of the fort, began to collect at the village again, 
until in the shadow of the Rock, now named Fort St. 
Louis, it was estimated that over twenty thousand 
Indians had their tents pitched. Here was the best 
fortified place established by La Salle in the present 
state of Illinois. Here we might leave him, for in the 
spring of 1683 he left Fort St. Louis, intending to go to 
Canada, and thence to France to interest the king in his 
projects. He never saw his Fort St. Louis again. 

La Salle made his way to France, persuaded the king 
to approve and aid him in his plans, and finally, in July, 
1684, left France, with four ships and ample supplies, 
intending to enter the mouth of the Mississippi, estab- 
lish a colony, and then ascend to Fort St. Louis of the 
Illinois. His usual bad luck followed him. The leaders 
quarreled. The vessels missed the mouth of the river. 
They landed four hundred miles west of the river. 
Three of the ships were wrecked, the fourth finally 
returned to France, leaving La Salle with about a 
hundred of his colonists in an unknown country, which 
has since proved to have been the coast of the present 

57 



ILLINOIS HISTOKY STORIES 

state of Texas. Here they suffered and many of them 
died from fevers and other diseases, La Salle vainly 
trying to find the river. 

Finally, about the first of January, 1687, La Salle 
determined to make a desperate attempt to reach the 
river, then proceed to Canada and send word to France, 
that help might be sent to the lost colony. With a small 
party he set out and had proceeded as far as the Trinity 
river, when dissensions broke out among the members 
of the party, and La Salle was waylaid and treacherously 
shot to death. Ther'e died with him in as foul a manner, 
his faithful Indian hunter, Nika, his nephew, and 
another companion. A few of his party reached the 
Illinois, went on to Canada and returned to France. 
Of the remnant of the colony left in Texas, not one 
escaped to tell the tale of their sufferings and disasters. 
Months afterwards, Tonti, not knowing his leader was 
dead, set out to seek him in the wilds of Texas and 
came upon the ruins of the place that had sheltered 
them. All had been killed by Indians. 

Thus ends the story of La Salle so far as the country 
connected with Illinois has to do. He was a brave, pa- 
tient, much suffering man. He opened the way for the 
French settlers to enter the Mississippi valley both by 
way of the north and of the south. He deserved a title 
of nobility and great wealth from his country; instead, 
after his death at the hands of villainous assassins, he 
was denied even a grave beside the murky river in 
the dreary wilderness near the Gulf. 



CHAPTER V 

FRENCH OCCUPATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 

La Salle was assassinated in the southern wilderness 
early in 1687. Tonti held his post on the Rock, called 
Fort St. Louis, protecting the Indian tribes that had 
been induced to settle in the neighborhood, and waiting 
for reinforcements from the home country. The rein- 
forcements never came. France was not a successful 
colonizing country. The king and the French cabinet 
did not realize until it was forever too late the value of 
their interests in the New World. 

When Father Marquette visited the Kaskaskia In- 
dians prior to his death, he established among them the 
*' Mission of the Immaculate Conception." This mission 
was continued until the French power disappeared from 
the Mississippi valley. 

In 1698 the French king sent out a colony under one 
d 'Iberville, a Canadian, who had promised to take pos- 
session of the mouth of the Mississippi and colonize it. 
d 'Iberville arrived in the Gulf near the mouth of the 
Mississippi in the month of February or March, 1698. 
While exploring the inlets and trying to determine 
the best place for a settlement, one of his men found an 
Indian chief with a blue cloak and what he called a 
''wonderful medicine," a piece of speaking-bark. The 
man traded a hatchet for it and found that it was a 
letter from Tonti to La Salle, written thirteen j^ears 

59 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

before. When La Salle was struggling in the mazes of 
the Texas swamps, striving in vain to rediscover the 
great river, Tonti, hearing that he had left France with 
his colony, went down the river to meet him. He went 
to the mouth of the river and sought for days to locate 
him, then gave up the effort. But he gave an Indian 
chief a cloak and wrote a letter to La Salle, leaving it 
with the Indian to be delivered should he chance to meet 
the white man. After thirteen years the letter was 
placed in the hands of a Frenchman, but the one for 
whom it was intended and to whom it would have meant 
so much had been silenced forever. 

d 'Iberville finally decided to establish himself at the 
place now called Biloxi. In April, 1699, they built a 
fort at this place, d 'Iberville soon after returned to 
France, and the control of the colony fell into the 
hands of his younger brother, Bienville. On one of his 
exploring expeditions Bienville found some Indians, 
Chickasaws, who had been trading with the English, 
and with the help of Englishmen had fought a battle 
with some other Indians. This was startling news to 
the French. It is worth noting in our outline of the 
early occupation of the country. It tells us that at that 
early day the English settlers were finding their way 
through and around the southern Alleghanies. You 
remember that Joliet reported that in his explorations 
in 1673 he had met some Indians with either English 
or Spanish arms in their hands. The French soon 
had occasion to meet some of these pioneer English. 

In 1700 three things happened which we shall do well 
to make a note of. First, a member of the colony at 
Biloxi, a man by the name of La Sueur, with a two- 
masted vessel sailed up the Mississippi from the Gulf to 

60 



FRENCH OCCUPATION 

Lake Pepin. There he built a fort, killed four hundred 
buffalo, traded with the Indians and carried back to 
Biloxi a boat-load of blue mud, believing it to contain 
valuable ore. This was the first boat of any size to 
ascend the river. Second, Bienville moved his settle- 
ment from Biloxi to the present site of Mobile. Third, 
that year Tonti, discouraged with his work at the Rock 
and threatened by hostile tribes, persuaded the Kaskas- 
kia Indians to move down the Mississippi where the 
French might still protect them. The Indians moved, 
but upon reaching the land near the mouth of the 
Kaskaskia river and finding it a goodly land and unoc- 
cupied, they decided to pitch their tents there instead 
of following Tonti to the gulf. This explains the 
change in our Indian map, where we found the Illinois 
Indians crowded upon a small territory along the Kas- 
kaskia. Tonti went on down the river and joined the 
colony of Bienville at Mobile. It is said that he died 
there of yellow fever the next year. 

In 1792 one Juchereau, a trader from Montreal, estab- 
lished a trading-post just above the present site of 
Cairo. In the course of a few years he built a tannery 
there and dressed buffalo hides and shipped them down 
the Mississippi river, as well as up the Ohio toward 
Montreal. Finally with thirty thousand buffalo skins 
on hand he became frightened and ran away, leaving 
this vast stock of skins to spoil. Exploring parties went 
up the Missouri river and the Arkansas and wandered 
over the intervening territory in search for precious 
metals. 

This was not the order of people of which profitable 
colonies are made. In 1712 the king, disgusted with 
the efforts to colonize under the Royal patronage, turned 

61 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

the whole matter over to Anthony Crozat, a wealthy 
French merchant, who undertook to make settlements 
on business principles and to manage the colony for 
fifteen years. It was his purpose to search for mines 
and to protect the French possessions from the Spanish 
and English. The story of the colony from 1712 to 
1717 is a repetition of failures, of vicious and dishonest 
conduct, and of treacherous dealings with Indians and 
whites alike. In 1717 Crozat gave up the task. It was 
too much for him to manage according to business prin- 
ciples. 

We come now to one of those remarkable speculative 
phenomena that have visited from time to time every 
civilized community in the history of the world. The 
outlines of the story are well worth a little time and 
attention. 

John Law, a renegade from England, who had been 
tried, convicted and sentenced to be hung, escaped and 
made his way to France. He was versatile in expe- 
dients and a fascinating talker. He was a gambler, 
and it is said introduced the game of faro upon the 
continent of Europe. But in time he established, as the 
result of his gambling, a bank in the city of Paris. He 
at once became a leading financial adviser of the King 
Regent. (Louis XV was then a child about six years 
of age). Louis XIV had died, leaving the government 
in debt about sixteen million dollars. Law came for- 
ward with a scheme for raising this money. He 
recommended the issuing of paper money based upon 
the real estate of the nation. One million dollars of 
paper was to be issued for every two million dollars 
worth of real estate. Soon there was an abundance of 
money. Prices at once rose and a general prosperity 

62 



FRENCH OCCUPATION 

beamed upon the land. Law became famous as a 
financier. 

In September, 1717, he brought into the market his 
great scheme. This was known as the Mississippi Com- 
pany. Its object was to colonize the Mississippi valley 
and exploit it for its precious metals and diamonds. 
A great commerce was to be carried on between this 
country and Europe. Pamphlets were distributed tell- 
ing of all the wonders of this far-away land. No 
western town boomer of the nineteenth century ever 
dared to lie with the brazen effrontery shown by these 
circulars of John Law. It was even said the country 
grew flowers in whose cups the dewdrops of the night 
would crystallize into diamonds. Gold was to be found 
in abundance in every stream. The sediment in the 
waters of the Mississippi contained enough to make 
every man, woman and child rich. Bars of gold, said to 
have been thus collected, and diamonds said to have been 
formed in the flowers, were placed on exhibition in the 
shop windows. Then the stock of the company was 
placed on sale. Men and women fought with each 
other for places in the lines where they might buy the 
stock. Thousands of people flocked to the ships eager 
to be transported to the new field of wealth. 

When the tide of those who were anxious to cross 
over the ocean began to wane, the prisons were opened 
and the streets were swept of their riffraff to be sent out 
to colonize the valley of paradise and coin wealth for 
themselves and for the lucky holders of stock at home. 
Of such material were the French possessions in the 
lower Mississippi peopled. In 1718, Bienville estab- 
lished a colony at the present site of New Orleans and 
laid out the beginnings of the most important city in 
5 63 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

the southern part of the valley. In the five years from 
1717 to 1722 the Mississippi Company sent out seven 
thousand settlers and seven hundred slaves to Louisiana. 
Then the bubble burst. Ruin came upon thousands of 
homes in Europe. Millions upon millions of dollars 
were lost, and John Law fled for his life from Prance 
with nothing left of his great fortune. The thousands 
who had fought for places in the lines to buy stock and 
who deified Law were almost beggared in the over- 
whelming collapse, and of course they charged up all 
their grievances against Law. 

In the great valley of the Mississippi prosperity came 
out of the misfortunes of Europe. The people were 
here, and they had been convinced, after years of fruit- 
less searching and suffering, that there were no dia- 
monds in the petals of the flowers and there was no 
gold in the sediment of the Mississippi. They had 
learned, however, that there were riches to be earned by 
cultivating the soil, and that any one with reasonable 
industry could become an independent householder in 
this country. So the army of immigrants that had 
come from all the diverse elements of French life set 
themselves to work to organize a form of society that 
might be permanent and agreeable. In the early immi- 
gration there were many more men than women, and to 
supply the deficiency shiploads of young women were 
brought over to be bought for wives. In this way began 
many of the ''first families" of Louisiana. Many a 
proud dame of the South can trace her ancestry back to 
the time when a Mississippi colony immigrant met a 
young adventuress on the levee of the new city of New 
Orleans and there began family life. 

During all this time what was going on further up 

64 



FRENCH OCCUPATION 

the river? It is in this up-river country that we are 
chiefly interested. We have stated that in 1718 Bien- 
ville had established a permanent colony at New 
Orleans. Two years later one of his lieutenants, Major 
Pierre Boisbriant, led a colony of over a hundred people 
up the river to some sixteen miles above Kaskaskia and 
there built a fort, calling it Fort Chartres. Chartres 
Landing is still pointed out on the river where this 
fort was built. In 1721 Kaskaskia had risen to the 
dignity of a parish. In 1722 the first land warrant 
known to the real estate records of Illinois was issued 
by Boisbriant. In 1721 Francois Renault, who in 1720 
brought the first negro slaves to Illinois, took two 
hundred miners and five hundred slaves to the point 
where Galena now stands and began operating the lead 
mines at that place. These mines are still furnishing 
profitable employment to hundreds of men. In the 
same year, 1721, a college and a monastery were estab- 
lished at Kaskaskia, and about the same time Fort 
Chartres became the head of the political and social 
life of the upper part of the valley. Cahokia, 
Prairie du Rocher and St. Phillippe were laid out in the 
near vicinity of Fort Chartres. 

If we look across the state we shall find that, after the 
Illinois Indians with Tonti had departed from Fort St. 
Louis, the portage by way of Chicago had become 
dangerous and was not much used by the traders 
between Canada and the valley settlements. Instead of 
that they came by way of Lake Erie, then up the 
Maumee river, and made a portage to the headwaters 
of the Wabash, thence down the Ohio. This meant the 
building of forts along this routQ. The portage from 
the Maumee began where Fort Wayne now stands. 

65 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

The post on the upper Wabash was called Fort Ouata- 
non. LaFayette, Indiana, now stands on this spot. 
In 1715 a boat-load of fifteen thousand skins was 
collected on the Wabash and successfully taken down 
the river to New Orleans. A fort and trading-post was 
established at Vincennes in 1722, the very year in which 
John Law's bubble broke over France. 

Slowly but steadily the French had extended their 
settlements and trading-posts from the days of the early 
mission stations on the Great Lakes until the middle 
of the eighteenth century. A new era in the history of 
the valley was about to be ushered in. Before taking 
it up we shall briefly recall the position of the French 
and quote something of their manner of life. 

Between 1673, the days of Marquette, and 1750, when 
the barrier of the Alleghanies was about to give way, 
precipitating a flood of Anglo-Saxon home makers upon 
the valley, we have found forts or settlements or trad- 
ing places established at various places along the north- 
ern lakes, at Miami (the St. Joseph river), at Fort St. 
Louis, at Peoria, at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Fort Chartres 
and other settlements near the mouth of the Kaskaskia ; 
at Galena, at Cairo, and at many places down the river 
extending to New Orleans, then out on the gulf to Biloxi 
and Mobile; at Niagara, at Fort Le Boeuf and a few 
other places leading into the Ohio valley. But notwith- 
standing all this array of settlements, it is necessary 
to repeat a caution, made some time ago, that these 
colonies did not mean anything like what the colonies 
on the Atlantic seaboard meant. After seventy-five 
years of colonization in the most fruitful valley in all 
the world, in a valley which is capable of furnishing 
food for twenty million of people, we find the total 

66 



FEENCH OCCUPATION 

French population never to have exceeded at any one 
time ten thousand souls from the lakes to the gulf. This 
is surely a meager showing, and when we further con- 
sider that this population in such a land was frequently 
dependent upon the home country for food to eat we are 
tempted to question whether after all they were of any 
more service to the world at large than the tribes of 
Indians they were attempting to displace. 

French writers of the period give us some glimpses 
of the manner of life among the people of these early 
settlements, which are entertaining and form a good 
background for the permanent setting of our story. 
We can quote but a few samples. 

From a letter written by an Ursuline nun at New 
Orleans to her father in 1727 : 

I can hardly realize that I am on the banks of the Mississippi 
because there is here, in certain things, as much magnificence as 
in France. Gold and velvet stuffs are commonly used, although 
they cost three times as much as in Rouen. Corn-bread costs 
ten cents a pound, eggs fifty cents a dozen, milk fifteen cents a 
measure. We have pineapples — most excellent fruit — peas and 
wild beans, watermelons and potatoes, an abundance of figs, and 
pecans, walnuts and hickory nuts. There are also pumpkins. As 
to meat, we live on wild venison, wild geese and turkey, hares, 
chickens, ducks, teal, partridges and other game. The rivers 
abound in monstrously large fish. We eat bread made of half 
wheat and half rice. The dish most in favor is rice boiled in 
milk and what is known as sagamite, which consists of Indian 
corn pounded in a mortar and boiled in water and butter. 

One might think from this letter that in such a 
country a colony must thrive and at least be able to 
care for itself. Yet in 1709 in that very region 
provisions became so scarce that the whole colony was 
obliged to live on acorns and Bienville was obliged to 

67 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

disperse his soldiers and send them out among the 
Indians to get a living. 

This picture, when compared with that of the Pil- 
grims — forcing a living out of the rocky soil of New 
England mid winters' snow and summers' drought, 
illustrates most forcibly the difference between the two 
classes of settlers. 

The following is from Monette: "The French on 
the Illinois were remarkable for their easy amalgamation 
with the red race in manners and customs. Their 
villages sprang up in long narrow streets. The houses 
were so close that the people could carry on conversa- 
tions from their balconies." Each homestead was sur- 
rounded by its own rude picket fence. The houses 
were generally one story high, surrounded by sheds or 
galleries. The walls were constructed of a rude frame- 
work, having upright corner posts and studs connected 
by numerous cross-ties. The spaces between were filled 
by straw and clay and plastered by hand with clay. 
"The chimney was made in the same manner and of 
similar materials. There were four corner posts slant- 
ing toward the top and the cross pieces were filled in 
with clay." 

* ' A large field near by was fenced off for the common 
use." . . . "The season for plowing, harvesting, 
etc., was regulated by special enactments or by public 
ordinance, and took place at the same time in the 
several villages." . . . "Even the form and man- 
ner of dooryards was regulated by public enactment." 

"The winter dress of the man was generally a coarse 
blanket capote, drawn over shirt and long vest which 
served both as a cloak and a hat, for the hood attached 
to the collar could be drawn over the head when it was 

68 



FRENCH OCCUPATION 

cold. In summer the head was generally enveloped in 
a blue handkerchief in the form of a turban." 

"At the close of each year it was the custom of the 
young men to disguise themselves in old clothes, visit 
the several houses of the village, and engage in friendly 
dances with the inmates. This was understood as being 
an invitation for all the family to meet in a general 




K.. ., - _. :-3?i^^^Vv:'2i;;/5^^^;:35i:55sc^^^ 



A French House Amonsf the Illinois. 



ball, in which to watch the birth of the New Year. 
Large crowds assembled, carrying their own refresh- 
ments, and a merry time was the result. Another 
custom was general on January 6. By lot, four kings 
were chosen, each of whom selected for himself a queen. 
These together perfected arrangements for an enter- 
tainment known as a king ball. Towards the close of 
the first dance the old queens selected new kings, whom 
they kissed as the formality of introduction into the 
office. In a similar manner these kings chose new 

69 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

queens, and thus the gay time continued during the 
entire carnival, up to the week preceding Lent." 

"Separated by an immense wilderness from all civil- 
ized society, these voluntary exiles yet retained all the 
suavity and politeness of their race. It is a remarkable 
fact that the roughest hunter or boatman among them 
could, at any time, appear in a ballroom, or at a 
council fire, with the carriage and behavior of a well- 
bred gentleman. At the same time the French women 
were remarkable for the sprightliness of their con- 
versation, and the grace and elegance of their manners. ' ' 

As late as 1750 a missionary at Kaskaskia wrote as 
follows: ''We have here whites, negroes and Indians, 
to say nothing of the cross-breeds. There are five 
French villages, and three of the natives, within a space 
of twenty-one leagues, situated between the Mississippi 
and another river called the Kaskaskia. In the five 
French villages there are, perhaps, eleven hundred 
whites, three hundred 'blacks, and some sixty red slaves, 
or savages. The three Indian towns do not contain 
more than eight hundred souls all told." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE TRANSFER OF THE VALLEY FROM THE FRENCH TO THE 

ENGLISH 

In 1673 Marquette and Joliet found Indians near the 
mouth of the Arkansas river with guns in their hands. 
In 1700 Bienville found Indians who had been engaged 
in a fight with English as allies. These were indications 
of a coming struggle. The French did what they could 
in their poor way to get ready for it. Among other 
things we learned that they located a great many 
emigrants in the Illinois country. Five villages sprang 
up around the Kaskaskia mission. In 1720 Boisbriant 
led a colony of six hundred to the site of Chartres and 
there erected a fort. This fort became the strongest 
post on the Mississippi; perhaps it was the best built 
and best fortified place in America south of Canada. 
The fort was built at first with stone foundations, then 
extended upward with palisades set in the stone-work. 
It enclosed about four acres of ground and became the 
stronghold of the French in all that region. It was in 
the days of the Mississippi Company and things were 
being done on a lavish scale. Later than this, in 1750^ 
when it seemed that a test of strength might soon come, 
Colonel Macarty was commissioned to rebuild this fort, 
making it still stronger. Over a million dollars was 
spent upon the works and their defenses. 

Wealthy people, as well as the vagabond classes, were 

71 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

coming to the valley of the Mississippi, and fashionable 
and richly dressed mothers and daughters of French 
officers, soldiers and speculators were numerous, and set 
up a social life in harmony with their surroundings and 
inclinations. Gay companies of ladies and gentlemen 
rode to and fro among the villages stretched along the 
river bottoms, visiting, gossiping, arranging for parties 
and dances and outings, as if there were no work to be 
done any where in all their world. Dinners and balls 
and hunting parties were as common around old Fort 
Chartres as they were in Paris. French houses were 
built more and more imposing and commodious. The 
farms were chiefly tended by slaves and the Indians 
who were probably pressed into the service, as the Indian 
did not like farming any better than the Frenchman. 
No one pretended to live on the farm, but all lived in 
villages, giving opportunity for a social life. They had 
in the western colonies nothing of the sober and solemn 
traits found in the New England settlements, but every 
village had its frequent dances and outings. The 
French were a gay people. They went to church in the 
morning on the Sabbath as regularly as did the Puritan, 
but in the afternoon, when the church service was over 
and dinner was eaten, they went to their dancing or 
hunting or card playing. It was a gay life they lived, 
and nowhere were the characteristics of the French 
people better illustrated than in these settlements along 
the Mississippi around Kaskaskia in the Illinois 
country. 

Across the country on the Wabash was Fort Vin- 
cennes; and a little further to the north, at the portage 
from the Maumee, was the Fort Ouatanon. The people 
across the Alleghanies were noting all these things. 

72 



THE TEANSFER OF THE VALLEY 

They were beginning to cross over the mountains and 
the time was at hand to decide whether the discovery by 
Cabot and the treaty with the Iroquois were to stand 
for more than the discoveries by Marquette and Joliet 
and La Salle and the settlements made by their country- 
men. The English and the French could not both 
abide in this valley, large as it w^as, and be at peace. 
The French were the aggressors in the actual conflict, 
hiring Indians to invade the frontier settlenients in the 
New England colonies, paying for the scalps that were 
brought into the forts. They hoped to terrify the 
English and force them to abandon their outlying settle- 
ments and give up their fur trade with the Indians. 
The French cared little for settlements and farms, but 
they wanted the fur trade with the Indians to continue. 
The English, on the other hand, did not care so much 
for the trade, but they wanted to settle and open farms 
and clear the ground of useless timber. Of course 
where the English settled, the hunting and trading were 
at an end. 

In 1748 the English decided that, instead of with- 
drawing, they were ready to push out across the moun- 
tains in earnest. The Ohio land company was formed, 
the king having promised five hundred thousand acres 
of land in the Ohio country to the company upon 
certain conditions. 

The Washingtons were active directors and large 
stockholders in this enterprise. They sent agents into 
the country across the mountains to inspect the land 
and select places favorable for settlements. Of course 
they found the French there; then came the message 
from the Governor of Virginia to the commandant at 
Fort Venango, on the head waters of the Alleghany 

73 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

river, asking him by what right he was there and 
warning him to leave. You know how the history intro- 
duces this subject with George Washington in the fore- 
ground. Then came Fort Duquesne, then Braddock, 
then the French and Indian War in all its bitterness. 
There were all the campaigns against Duquesne, 
Niagara (La Salle's old fort), Louisburg, Ticonderoga, 
Crown Point and Quebec, and all the side issues of 
Indian massacres. Your United States history tells 
you of Wolfe's victory on the plains of Abraham and 
how the French hero, Montcalm, died thanking God 
that he could not live to see the fort surrendered, while 
Wolfe was dying thanking God that the French were 
running and he had won the victory. That was a 
great victory indeed. It ended the war in America, 
for soon Montreal was surrendered, then the French 
quit fighting, and in 1763 a treaty of peace was signed 
in Paris. France had been most terribly worsted both 
in the New World and in the old, being forced to pay 
an enormous price for her defeat. All of her posses- 
sions east of the Mississippi river, including Canada, 
were given over to the British. By a secret treaty 
made with Spain, she gave all of her possessions west 
of the river and the Island of Orleans, including the 
city of New Orleans, to Spain. So when the war was 
ended, France did not have a foot of territory in all 
this great land. The lakes and rivers and forests which 
her heroic Frontenacs, Marquettes, La Salles, Bienvilles 
and thousands of other daring Frenchmen had dis- 
covered and fortified and settled, after a fashion, passed 
forever from her grasp. 

From the Atlantic to the great river, England was 
now supreme. Legally, her colonists could go any- 

74 



THE TRANSFER OP THE VALLEY 

where in all that region and make their homes. But 
when they tried to do this they found that there were 
still dangers and death in the way. The Indians must 
still be dealt with, and the English were not as skillful 
as the French in dealing with the Indian. It is a dark 
and bloody story, telling often of cruelty and treachery 
on the part of the English and of the awful penalty 
exacted by the merciless red man. It was during this 
period, between the French and Indian war and the 
beginning of the Revolution, that Pontiac, the great 
Indian chief, attempted to organize all the tribes from 
the lakes to the gulf into one great confederacy to wipe 
the English entirely out of the valley. The French en- 
couraged the enterprise, and, while it did not succeed, 
it cost thousands of lives and much suffering. It has 
been estimated that in all the wars that have been 
carried on with the Indians from the beginning until 
now, five white men have been slain to every Indian. 
So far as we can read now, looking back over the past, 
every outbreak, every war with the Indians, every 
massacre, was the outcome of some wrong committed by 
the whites against the red men. But all this your usual 
text-book in history will tell you; we are chiefly inter- 
ested in the things that happened in the Illinois country. 
The towns of Kaskaskia and Cahokia and the Fort 
Chartres now belonged by the treaty to the English. 
What happened there? The war did not reach them, 
except that it is worth telling that it was a Captain 
Villiers who took a company of men from Fort Chartres 
in the Illinois country and, making his way up the Ohio 
and across the Monongahela and across a part of the 
Alleghanies, reached Fort Necessity and there forced 
Major George Washington from Virginia to surrender. 

75 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

When the news of this victory reached Fort Chartres 
they fired their guns and waved their flags and had 
dinners and dances without number. They did more 
than that. They loaded nine tons of flour on flatboats 
and started them up the Ohio to feed the soldiers 
gathering at Fort Duquesne. So during the years of 
this war the French people in the Illinois country sent 
breadstuff s and lead for bullets to the French soldiers 
in the field. 

You remember that Fort Chartres had been rebuilt 
before this time. It was now a solid stone fortification 
eighteen feet high, with forty-eight loop holes, through 
which guns or cannons might be fired. Soldiers' 
quarters, store-houses, powder magazines and other 
necessary buildings were erected within the enclosure. 
''Now," said they, "let England and Virginia come and 
take it if they can. ' ' But never a gun was fired against 
this mighty fortress. It stood in the wind and weather 
until the Mississippi river, which it was built to defend, 
gradually ate the foundations out from under it, and 
this pride of the Illinois French people was swallowed 
up in the muddy waters of the great river during a 
flood in 1772, three years before the beginning of the 
Revolution. 

For two years after the close of the French and 
Indian War the English did not reach Fort Chartres to 
take possession. The war with Pontiac kept them busy. 
He stood across the path fighting over again the battle 
of his French friends. During these two years there 
was little government in the Illinois villages, for after 
the treaty of peace the French governor left the fort 
with quite a large body of followers and made his wsy 
across the river to the Spanish settlement at St. Louis. 

76 



THE TRANSFER OF THE VALLEY 

They preferred to be Spanish rather than English sub- 
jects. Pontiac, driven from the North after repeated 
defeats, took up his abode among the villages of Illinois. 
Finally, on October 10, 1765, a British company of 
about one hundred and twenty Highlanders reached 
Fort Chartres and there without opposition took 
possession of it. The lilies of France were lowered and 
for the first time on Illinois soil the flag of England 
was flung to the breeze. There was no disposition to 
molest the French settlers in the Illinois country. They 
were assured that they might continue on in their 
work and worship with full liberty of conscience and 
wdth a full recognition of all their civil rights. The 
English troops were withdrawn within a month, de- 
parting by the way of New Orleans for Philadelphia. 

No more British soldiers were sent into the Illinois 
country. The civil government was administered by 
governors appointed by the English. Several of these 
governors were Frenchmen who had given their oaths 
of allegiance to England, and, being familiar with the 
people and their institutions, carried on the government 
very much as it had been carried on under the French 
rule. 

In 1763, after the treaty of peace with France, but 
before the English had reached Fort Chartres, while 
Pontiac 's war was in progress, and probably as a bribe to 
the Indians for ending the war. King George issued a 
proclamation dividing the territory of the British crown 
in America into five parts. There was East Florida, 
covering about the same area as is covered by the state 
of Florida now; West Florida, taking a strip between 
the thirty-first parallel and the gulf, extending from 
East Florida to the Mississippi river. We are not 

77 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

much interested in either of these divisions at the pres- 
ent time. To the north was the province of Quebec, 
which included both sides of the St. Lawrence river 
as far as the Ottawa river, and extending from the 
present boundary of the United States to about half 
way to Hudson Bay. Then there was the division 
occupied by the thirteen colonies, and the fifth division, 
to be known as the Indian Territory, from the Miss- 
issippi river to the boundary of the colonies. This is 
the division in which we are interested. The early 
charters of the colonies called for all the land from 
''sea to sea," which came to be interpreted, when the 
country was better known, as meaning from the Atlantic 
to the Mississippi. This proclamation of 1763 there- 
fore was cutting off from the colonies a part of what 
they thought of right belonged to them. But to make 
the matter as bad as it could be, the proclamation stated 
that no one should be permitted to make treaties with 
the Indians or to buy lands from them except in the 
name of the king, nor should any of the colonists pre- 
sume to settle on any of the lands included within the 
Indian territory. The line between the Indian territory 
and the colonies was drawn down the divide of the 
Alleghany mountains. It began approximately with 
Lake Ontario, then ran southward along the ridge of the 
divide to the source of the Chattahooche river, thence 
along this river to the gulf. This would shut up the 
colonies to the limits they were trying to break through 
when the French and Indian war began. In fact it 
was to prevent just such limitations that the Ohio 
Company was formed and that George Washington had 
made his journey to Fort Venango, that Braddock had 
been sent upon his fatal expedition and that the col- 

78 



THE TEANSFER OF THE VALLEY 

onists had given of their means and blood to drive the 
French from the valley. Here was one of the very first 
grievances that led to the War of the Revolution. This 
was a much more serious matter than the payment of 
a few pounds on tea or stamped paper. The people of 
the colonies did not obey the proclamation, nor could 
they see how it could be obeyed if they were to continue 
to grow. Treaties continued to be made with the 
Indians. The chiefs of the Illinois made a grant of 
nearly all the lands now comprising the state of Illi- 
nois to a little group of people. After the Revolu- 
tion the United States refused to ratify these treaties, 
although eminent English judges held that they were 
valid. 

In 1768 a court of justice was organized at Fort 
Chartres for the Illinois country. It consisted of seven 
judges and held its first session December 9, 1768. 
This was the first experience the French people had 
ever had with the jury system. Heretofore they had 
been governed arbitrarily by the governor, or the notary 
and the priest. They could not understand how a 
dozen farmers or blacksmiths or traders could interpret 
the laws or, administer justice. They complained bit- 
terly of the change and many of them withdrew to 
the Spanish side of the river. Finally, to satisfy the 
demands of this Illinois settlement of French people, a 
change was made in the boundaries. This change 
occurred in 1774, in what is known as the Quebec act. 
The Illinois country, including approximately all the 
country north of the Ohio river, was made a part of the 
Quebec territory, and the French system of laws was 
applied to all that territory. To the thirteen colonies 
this was an added insult. It roused their passions and 
6 79 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

called forth their denunciations as much as any single 
act ever passed by the British parliament. In the 
Declaration of Independence we read: "For abol- 
ishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring 
province, establishing therein an arbitrary government 
and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once 
an example and a fit instrument for introducing the 
same absolute rule into these colonies." But this rule 
continued until the reorganization after the close of 
the Revolution. 

We can well understand how it happened with all 
the troubles about the Indian tribes, about the questions 
of jurisdiction and the system of laws to be applied, 
about the questions of law as to whether deeds and 
grants and treaties made contrary to the proclama- 
tion of 1763 would be sustained when they came 
to a judicial investigation, that the Illinois country 
from 1763 to 1780 made little or no progress. Indeed 
there were fewer people in the Illinois country at 
the close of the Revolution than there were fifteen 
years before. 

But while the Illinois country during these years 
was making little gains in population, the country south 
of the Ohio, in the present states of Tennessee and 
Kentucky, was being peopled by a hardy race of 
pioneers. In the advance guard of the white invasion 
of that region was Daniel Boone, who as a young man 
had served as a teamster in Braddock's campaign. 
His story is one of the most interesting in our border 
annals. Kentucky was Virginia country, while Ten- 
nessee belonged to North Carolina. When the Declara- 
tion of Independence was signed there were probably 
three or four thousand people living within the borders 

80 



THE TRANSFER OF THE VALLEY 

of the present Kentucky, and perhaps a few more than 
that within the present limits of Tennessee. These 
border settlements had much to do with the next step 
in the history of our Illinois country. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY PASSES TO THE UNITED STATES 

Before taking up the subject directly we shall review 
briefly what we know of the early events connected 
with our Illinois history. 

We learned that in 1673 Joliet and Marquette, on 
their return trip from the Mississippi, turned into the 
Illinois river and followed it to the portage of the Des 
Plaines, and then crossed over to Lake Michigan on their 
way to Green Bay. We know that on this trip they 
found a village of Indians, whom they called Kaskaskia 
Indians, near the present site of Utica. Father Mar- 
quette promised to return to them to preach the gospel. 
He did return the following year, after spending a 
whole winter, sick, in a poor hovel on the ground where 
a part of Chicago now stands, perhaps about five miles 
from the lake on the south branch of the river. The 
Chicago and Alton railroad has erected a stone monu- 
ment of boulders to mark the vicinity of this winter 
camp. In 1907 the Chicago Association of Commerce 
erected a mahogany cross to mark the supposed spot 
on the bank of the river, just south of Blue Island 
avenue. The monument of mahogany, fourteen feet 
high and twelve inches thick, was donated by Mr. 
Cameron L. Wiley. Father Marquette reached the 
Kaskaskia village on the Illinois and preached to the 
Indians. He established what he called a mission (a 

82 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

church) among them, calling it the Mission of the Im- 
maculate Conception. This mission was continued by 
one priest or another so long as the French held 
possession of the Illinois country, although it was after 
a time moved further south. This was the last visit of 
Marquette to the Illinois (1675). 

In 1679 came La Salle and Tonti. La Salle in his 
different trips crossed the state at least six times by way 
of the Illinois river, sometimes going by way of the 
Chicago river portage, sometimes by the Calumet, and 
sometimes by way of the Kankakee portage from the 
St. Joseph river. La Salle built Fort Crevecoeur, near 
the present site of Peoria. It never was anything but 
a stockade and temporary stopping place, while the 
French occupied the country. He built and fortified 
Fort St. Louis on top of Starved Rock. Here Tonti 
held possession for some fifteen years, in close friend- 
ship with the Indians gathered around the rock. 

In 1700 Cahokia, a little below the present site of St. 
Louis, on the Illinois side of the river, was occupied by 
French priests and traders and at once became the 
nucleus of a French village. The same year Kaskaskia 
was settled by the French and Indians. We remember 
that it was at this time that Tonti wearied with waiting 
at the rock, persuaded the Indians to move southward 
toward the French settlements. He got them as far 
as the present site of Kaskaskia, named after them, and 
here they settled. In 1720 Fort Chartres was estab- 
lished by a colony of men led by one, Boisbriant, from 
the Biloxi or New Orleans colony. Two or three other 
villages were settled on this same peninsula, lying be- 
tween the Mississippi river and the Kaskaskia. They 
contained the larger part of the French population 

83 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 



south of Canada and north of New Orleans. We recall 
that as early as 1702 Juchereau established a trading 
station and built a tannery near the site of the present 



mmmaiim#im^ 




FRENCH 
EXPLORATIONS AND POSTS. 



Marquette & Joliet's Route, in 1673 

La Salle's Route to Ft. Crevecoeur 

and return, 1679.... --^ — 

La Salle's Route from Ft. St. Louis 

to the Gulf, »68?. -..~ .- 

Hennepin's Route, 1680. — X— X- 



Cairo, and that in 1721 Renault took two hundred 
miners and five hundred slaves to the site of Galena 
and began operating the lead mines. The line of travel 

84 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

between Canada and the lower Mississippi changed 
after Tonti abandoned the fort on the rock, the trail 
leading by the way of Lake Erie and the Maumee river, 
where the portage was short, to the upper waters of the 
Wabash. So a fort, Ouatanon, on the present site of 
Lafayette on the Wabash, was built. As early as 1715 
great cargoes of buffalo hides were shipped down the 
Wabash to New Orleans. 

In 1722, the year the Mississippi bubble broke, a fort 
and settlement were established on the present site of 
Vincennes. Then came the French and Indian War of 
1754-1763. While this was in progress the French 
settlements in the Illinois country sent flour and lead to 
the French troops by way of the Ohio river. After the 
treaty of peace in 1763, came Pontiac 's war, which made 
it impossible for the British government to take pos- 
session of its Illinois territory, so the French flag waved 
over Fort Chartres and a French officer was in charge 
until one day in October, 1765, a Scotch Highland com- 
pany marched into the fort and the French flag was 
taken down and the British flag was hoisted in its place. 

Then we remember that following the treaty of peace 
the British king issued a proclamation making all the 
country bounded by the Alleghany mountains, the 
Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the lakes, an Indian 
territory, and forbade any of the Atlantic colonies to 
send settlers into the territory. Then in 1774 this 
territory was added to the province of Quebec and the 
system of French laws was put into operation within its 
boundaries. We know that the King's proclamation 
did not keep such men as Daniel Boone and Kenton 
and McAfee, and hundreds of their kind, from cross- 
ing the mountains and making settlements in the 

85 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

western country. So by April 17, 1775, when the battle 
of Lexington was fought, there were two or three 
thousand settlers in the present territory of Tennessee 
and Kentucky. On the very day the news of the battle 
of Lexington reached the settlers in Kentucky a crowd 
of them were gathered together finishing a fort. The 
news of the battle so pleased them that they decided to 
call their new fort Fort Lexington. It stood on the site 
of the present city of Lexington, Kentucky. 

Among those who had gone back and forth along the 
mountain and river trails from Virginia to the Ohio and 
Kentucky country was a young man by the name of 
George Rogers Clark. He was a rover from boyhood. 
Like Washington, he learned enough of mathematics to 
become a surveyor, and he went into Kentucky, and 
perhaps into Tennessee, to follow his vocation. But he 
was warlike and loved the sound of fife and drum. 
There was frequent fighting along the border line, and 
George Rogers Clark was mixed up in several Indian 
skirmishes. Doubtless he would have added to his 
reputation more by staying out of some of these Indian, 
raids than by taking part in them. But 1777 came. 
Burgoyne had surrendered his army at Saratoga. The 
French king had given his consent to an open alliance 
with the colonists and sent ships and men to aid them. 
Things began to look very bright to the Americans. 
George Rogers Clark knew that all the great country 
from the Ohio to the lakes and to the Mississippi was held 
by a few British troops stationed at Detroit, and a 
very few more, chiefly French militia, stationed at 
Kaskaskia and Vincennes. 

Patrick Henry was governor of Virginia. He was a 
close personal friend of George Rogers Clark. To him 

86 



THE NOETHWEST TERRITORY 

the young man went and proposed a plan for capturing 
all the Illinois country from the British before they 
could know what was going on. He wanted a permit to 
gather men and some supplies for such an expedition. 
Governor Henry agreed with him as to the desirability 
of the enterprise, but the state was so poor it could give 
him no supplies, and men were so badly needed for the 
army of Washington that he could not give him a permit 
to recruit a company for this expedition on the frontier. 
After weeks of persuasion and argument, Clark finally 
secured from the governor an order for five hundred 
pounds of powder and permission to recruit a body of 
men west of the Blue Ridge mountains. It was a 
difficult task, but Clark was not easily discouraged. 
He finally found himself at Fort Washington, the 
present site of Cincinnati, Ohio, with a small body of 
recruits. He proceeded down the river as far as the 
present city of Louisville ; after hearing the complaints 
of some of his men, none of whom knew upon what 
errand they were bound, and letting all who wished 
return to their homes, he floated down the Ohio until 
he came' to an old deserted fort called Fort Massac, 
about three miles below the present town of Metropolis, 
Illinois. Here he landed his force of a little less than 
two hundred men. Clark did not dare follow the Ohio 
and the Mississippi around to Kaskaskia lest the Eng- 
lish should discover him. His success depended upon 
his ability to surprise the garrison. At this time there 
were about two thousand people living at Kaskaskia. 
There was no English garrison there, but a body of 
French militia under command of one, Rocheblave, a 
Frenchman who had given his allegiance to the British. 
On the thirtieth of June, 1778, almost a year from the 

87 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

time Clark had begun to plan for this expedition, he 
left his flatboats on the Ohio and started for a trip 
across the country. The distance was ninety miles in a 
straight line. The way was partly through the woods 
and partly across the open prairie. A hunter whom 
they met agreed to guide them. After losing the way 




The Route Taken by George Eogers Clark. 



occasionally they reached the Kaskaskia river above the 
town about four o'clock on the afternoon of July 4. 
Here they hid in the bushes until dark. Then they 
picked up some canoes and ferried themselves across the 
stream. 

Clark divided his men into three parts. Two were 
to enter the town from different directions while the 
third, under Clark, was to attack the fort and capture 
it with its garrison. All were to keep out of sight as 

88 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

far as possible until Clark should give the word that the 
garrison was captured. They found the commandant, 
Phillipe Rocheblave, in bed asleep. When he waked, 
Clark was beside him and he was a prisoner in the 
hands of the Americans, Then the other companies 
marched through the streets of the town, firing their 
guns and yelling like Indians to frighten the inhabitants 
and make them believe that a large army had attacked 
them. Word was sent to the people that they must stay 
in their houses or they would be shot. They expected to 
be shot at any rate. The French people of Kaskaskia, 
and the Indians in that region as well, had long been 
familiar with the reputation of the Kentucky frontiers- 
men. They were called the Long Knives, and it was 
believed that they gave no quarter, but killed and 
scalped all alike — men, women and children — whenever 
they went upon the warpath. So the poor simple 
French people thought their hour had come, and the 
Kentuckians did not try to relieve their fears that night. 
The town was taken. The commandant was a prisoner. 
He was defiant and saucy and insulting. Clark put 
hand-cuffs on him and in a few days sent him to Vir- 
ginia as a prisoner. His slaves were confiscated and 
sold for two thousand five hundred dollars and the 
money was divided out among Clark's men. 

When the morning came. Father Gibault, the priest, 
with several of the old men of the village, called upon 
Clark to ask that before they were all separated one 
from another they might be permitted to gather in the 
little chapel and hold a service and bid each other 
good-bye. Then Clark looked astonished and asked 
what kind of men they supposed him and his soldiers 
to be. He told them that they were not butchers nor 

89 



ILLINOIS HISTOBY STORIES 

savages. It was not their business to kill innocent 
men, women and children. They might go to their 
church or to their places of business just as they had 
always done. All he wanted was that they should give 
in their oath of allegiance to the government of Vir- 
ginia. 

When the people learned this they were so overjoyed 
they wept on each other's shoulders, and they thought 
Clark was the best and most generous man they had 
ever heard of. The church bell was rung and the 
people flocked to the little church where the good news 
was published, and then they all took the oath of 
allegiance to Virginia, under whose authority Clark 
was acting. 

A detachment of Clark's men, with a number of 
recruits from the French at Kaskaskia were sent at once 
to Cahokia, and that town was surrendered without 
opposition, and the people took the oath of allegiance. 
So all the river towns which had cost the French so 
much money and sacrifice to establish, and which the 
British had won by treaty at the close of the French 
and Indian War, passed without a shot or the loss of a 
life into the hands of the Virginians, never to be held 
again by a foreign government. 

A few days later Clark sent the priest, Father 
Gibault, with a few Kaskaskia citizens, to Fort Vin- 
cennes to persuade the people of that place to sur- 
render the town to the Americans. The fort was de- 
fended at the time by French militia, no British soldiers 
being there. The errand was successful. The French, 
after hearing what had happened at Kaskaskia, very 
readily agreed to become American citizens. Clark 
afterward sent one of his officers, Captain Helm, with 

90 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

one other American, to take charge of the fort and 
administer its affairs in the name of Virginia. 

From the Ohio to the lakes the British did not have 
a settlement left. Word was soon carried to Detroit, to 
the great surprise and chagrin of General Hamilton, the 
commander there. He at once organized parties of 
Indians and sent them out to attack any of Clark's men 
wherever they could find them. In the meantime he 
began organizing a force to retake the country from the 
Americans. Early in the winter he started from 
Detroit with his force. It was cold and he made slow 
progress. It was seventy-five days before he reached 
Vincennes. When they heard of his approach all the 
French deserted Captain Helm, refusing to fight against 
the British. When Hamilton appeared before the fort 
he did not know how many men were within. He de- 
manded that the fort be surrendered. Helm had 
charged a cannon with shot and it commanded the gate- 
way to the fort. He threatened to defend the place to 
the last, but in view of scarcity of provisions he con- 
sented to surrender, provided he might be allowed the 
honors of war. To this Hamilton readily agreed. So 
the American colors were taken down. The British 
were drawn up -in two lines to receive the surrendered 
garrison when, to their surprise the captain and one 
man marched out with flying colors. It must have 
made even the chagrined British laugh. 

Clark, at Kaskaskia, did not learn of what had hap- 
pened at Vincennes until some time in January. He 
was in a perilous situation. He well knew that as soon 
as the weather permitted, Hamilton would attack him 
and he could not resist him with the few men he had. 
(About half of Clark's men had returned to their 

91 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Kentucky homes after things had been settled in the 
Illinois villages.) There was no time to lose if Clark 
would hold the territory he had captured. He decided 
at once what he should do. He sent spies to Vincennes 
to learn the real situation there. Then he recruited all 
the French young men he could to fill up his ranks. 
Clark had become very popular in the meantime on 
account of the way he had dealt with the Indians. The 
French had come to believe him invincible. They were 
sure he must succeed in anything he undertook. So he 
had little trouble in getting quite a number of French- 
men to enlist with him. 

On the twenty-ninth of January, Colonel Francis 
Vigo, a Spanish merchant of St. Louis, who had become 
a great friend to Clark, returning from a trading trip 
to Vincennes, told Clark that all the British except 
about eighty men had returned to Detroit and that 
Hamilton was busy getting ready for a campaign in the 
spring. 

The time to act had come. The state of Virginia had 
not sent Clark a dollar nor a man. But Colonel Vigo 
had loaned him twenty thousand dollars. With this 
sum he met the necessary expenses of his expedition, 
and on the seventh of February, with his little force of 
one hundred and forty men, most of them French 
volunteers, started upon his adventurous march to 
Vincennes. The distance was not great, only about two 
hundred and thirty miles. In warm weather, when the 
fields were full of game and the prairie trails were dry, 
it would have been a light matter for Clark 's little army 
to have made this march. But they had no tents. 
Every foot of the prairie trail was water-soaked and 
muddy. The streams were flooded by the early spring 

92 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

freshets. Much of the distance they had to wade in the 
chill, icy water, sometimes waist deep. In crossing the 
Embarrass river and the small streams they sometimes 
were obliged to wade for miles with the water up to 
their shoulders, carrying their guns and powder over 
their heads. Their food gave out. Game was scarce 
and hard to kill. As they approached Vincennes 
they were afraid to shoot lest they announce their com- 
ing to the British. 

They reached the fort about dark on the twenty- 
second of February, and at once began an attack. 
The French inhabitants were glad to see them and 
furnished them with food and ammunition. General 
Hamilton, surprised and chagrined, refused to sur- 
render. The attack upon the fort, with occasional 
parleys, was continued until the twenty-fifth, when the 
fort was turned over to Clark and his victorious follow- 
ers. The stores captured with the fort were valued at 
about fifty thousand dollars, and in addition to this a 
boat-load of supplies on the way from Detroit was cap- 
tured, adding about forty thousand dollars worth more 
of supplies for division among the little band, that was 
almost shoeless and coatless after its fearful march 
through the swamps of the Wabash river bottoms. It 
was an heroic thing to do and bravely did the dauntless 
leader perform his part. Few marches in our history 
are so well calculated to stir the blood of patriotism as 
the details of this final move in the conquest of the 
Mississippi valley. 

The importance of this campaign of George Rogers 
Clark, including the conquest of the Illinois country, 
cannot be over-estimated. Had the country between 
the Ohio and the Mississippi been in the possession 

93 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

of the British when the treaty of 1783 was raade it 
would undoubtedly have remained theirs, as did Canada. 
Conquest and possession made it as much United States 
territory as that beyond the Alleghany mountains. 

It is greatly to be regretted that the record of such a 
man as George Rogers Clark cannot be glory covered to 
the end. But such was not to be the case. The state 
of Virginia did not realize how great things their heroic 
soldier of fortune had accomplished. His request for 
further commissions was refused; his debts contracted 
in the name of his state were neglected. Hurt to the 
quick, and heartsore, the hero of Kaskaskia and Vin- 
cennes, while yet in years but a young man retired to 
comparative privacy in the vicinity of Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, and there, in 1818, after severe sufferings from 
rheumatism and paralysis, the after effects of the 
exposures he had endured, he passed away and was 
buried at Locust Grove near that city. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROM THE REVOLUTION TO STATEHOOD — 1783 TO 1818 

George Rogers Clark had tal^en the fortified posts of 
the British within the Illinois territory. In all the 
region from the lakes to the Ohio river there was not a 
fort the British could claim. When the commissioners 
came to form the treaty of Paris in 1783, the fact that 
the Americans had conquered and taken possession of 
this region w^as sufficient to turn the scale in favor of 
permanent possession. So it came about that all the 
country below the lakes to the Spanish possessions on 
the south became the undisputed property of the United 
^irfonies. 

lit was the Virginia colony that had claimed, under 
her ''from sea to sea" charter, all the Illinois country. 
It was the governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry, that 
had authorized George Rogers Clark to take possession 
of the country. It w^as in the name of Virginia that 
C.ark had acted, and to Virginia he made his report. 

Virginia was not slow in following up the advantage 
gained by her adventurous soldiers. Kaskaskia was 
caken in July, 1778. In October of that year The 
Assembly of Virginia made provisions for a form of 
temporary government for the Illinois country. On the 
fifteenth of the following June, John Todd, one of 
Clark's colonels, issued a proclamation at Kaskaskia, 
organizing the country into a county of Virginia to be 
7 95 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

known as Illinois county. This county included all of 
the Northwest to which . Virginia had any semblance of 
a claim; Todd remained as governor until August 18, 
1782, when he was killed at the battle of Blue Lick 
Springs in Kentucky. He was succeeded by Timothy 
Montbrun, a Frenchman. 

As the treaty of peace signed in 1783 set at rest all 
doubts as to the possession of the country, it ceased to 
be so important a subject as it had been. There was 
enough to occupy the attention of the young nation 
nearer the center of population. The French in the 
valley had about all taken the oath of allegiance to the 
American government and seemed happy and contented. 

In 1781 a party of American settlers crossed the Alle- 
ghanies, descended the Ohio in a flatboat called "The 
Ark," and with great labor forced it up the Mississ^"ppi 
to a point within the present limits of Monroe couity. 
Here they landed and established the first permar ent 
American settlement in the present limits of Illin s. 
They called their settlement New Design. It was O'uly 
a small colony, but it was the advance guard of a 
different class of settlers from that the Mississippi 
valley had heretofore known. They had come to make 
farms, to cultivate the soil, to establish permanent 
homes and to possess the land for industrial purposes. 
It was a long hard struggle, into the particulars cf 
which we cannot go at present. 

On March 1, 1784, the state of Virginia ceded all her 
possessions west of the Ohio to the general government. 
The other colonies soon did the same. In this way the 
new government came into possession of a vast tract of 
land which could be divided up and sold to settlers. In 
May, 1785, Congress passed an act providing for the 

96 



REVOLUTION TO STATEHOOD 

survey of all this vast region. Here began that elabor- 
ate system of surveys which has been in use ever since, 
and which has given to this country the best, the simplest 
and the most complete system known to the world. 

In 1787 the famous Ordinance for the government of 
the territory northwest of the Ohio was passed by Con- 




Ohio Flatboat. 



gress. The same year General Arthur St. Clair was 
made governor of all the territory. In 1788 he reached 
Marietta, the oldest American settlement in Ohio. In 
1790 he, with the judges of the superior court, descend- 
ed the Ohio river in flatboats to the present site of 
Cincinnati. Here they laid out a county large enough 
to include all the settlements in that neighborhood and 
called it Hamilton county. They proceeded down the 
river and up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia, and there 
laid out two counties, to include all the settlements in 

97 



EEVOLUTION TO STATEHOOD 

that part of the territory. The boundary line of one 
began near the present town of Tazewell, on the 
Illinois river, ran straight to the site of Fort Massac, 
then followed the Ohio, Mississippi and Illinois to the 
place of beginning. This county was called St. Clair. 
All to the east of this and south of the Illinois was 
known as Knox county. A court was established at 
Cahokia and the forms of federal government begun. 
In 1795 the settlements in the Illinois country and the 
commencement of the courts justified the establishing 
of another county. A line was drawn a little south of 
the settlement of New Design, east and west from the 
Mississippi, to the Knox county line, and all south of 
that line was called Randolph county. These county 
lines were frequently changed. 

We may pause here to take note of an interesting 
incident in the early history of Cahokia that has but 
recently come to light. It is claimed that here in this 
little French village close by the Mississippi, began the 
public schools of Illinois. The old court house, used by 
the judges under St. Clair, stood for years, undisturbed. 
Recently it was bought by an association of citizens of 
Chicago and removed to Wooded Island in Jackson 
Park, where it stands, a relic of the past, to remind us 
of the primitive simplicity of those times. An old docu- 
ment was found bearing date May 6, 1794, addressed to 
the judges of the court. It is written in French, which 
when translated reads as follows : 

"The inhabitants of the parish of the Holy Family of Cahokia 
have the honor to express to you at their assembly that they 
have the desire to establish a school in the said parish (or 
town) for the instruction of their children. 

"As they are obliged to do many necessary public works in 

99 




100 



REVOLUTION TO STATEHOOD 

the parish, they cannot at once undertake the construction of a 
building necessary to hold the said school, so these representatives 
ask you gentlemen that you allow them to hold the said school in 
your audience room of the courthouse until they construct a 
building which will oblige all the inhabitants whose children 
have their instruction in the school and in which case, should 
there arise any defacement of the said audience room, they will 
leave it in the best condition which you judge necessary and 
proper. 

"That is why they supplicate you to accord them this request . 
as being necessary for the public good. In this cause they submit 
themselves to your good will and have the honor to be, very 
respectfully, 

"Your very humble and very obedient servants, 

"Louis Sebrun, 
"Louis Grand. 

"Cahokia, 6 May, 1794." 

This, according to the historians, was the first request 
for a public school in Illinois after the revolutionary 
war when, under one of our first laws, one section in 
each township was set aside for school purposes. 

With the erection in Jackson Park of the old court/ 
house in which the first Illinois schools were held, 
Chicago now possesses the only original historic public 
building west of Boston and north of New Orleans. 
The structure was the seat of local government at Ca- 
hokia, in what is the oldest county in the state. The little 
building is constructed of square black walnut logs, 
about ten inches square on the ends and one story high. 
The logs are set up on end in the style of the construc- 
tion of the French period. The overhanging roof makes 
the top of the porch, which extends all around it. At 
the end is a chimney and fireplace, with the old hand- 
wrought andirons. The picture of the French house in 

101 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Chapter V is almost an exact duplicate of this old Court 
House as it now stands on Wooded Island. 

In May, 1800, the' Northwest territory was divided. 
The part containing the present states of Indiana, 
Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois was set off and called 
Indiana territory. William Henry Harrison was made 
governor of this territory. The capital of the new terri- 
tory was fixed at Vincennes. In 1805 this territory was 
again divided. The part known as Michigan was cut off 
and named Michigan territory. In 1809 another division 
was made. At this time Indiana was set off by itself 
much as it is at present, while all of Illinois, Wisconsin 
and the peninsular part of Michigan was organized into 
the Illinois territory, Ninian Edwards was appointed 
governor and the seat of government was fixed at 
Kaskaskia. 

In 1812 a territorial legislature was elected by the 
people. Three new counties were established — Madison, 
Gallatin and Johnson. This made five counties in 
Illinois. 

Then came the war of 1812 with the British. In this 
war Illinois had some slight part. The most tragic 
event, and the only one with which we shall attempt 
to deal, is the massacre at Fort Dearborn, which 
occurred on the fifteenth of August, 1812. Indian 
raids and massacres had determined the government to 
erect a line of forts all along the western frontier to 
protect the settlers. Detroit was to the north of this 
line. In 1795 General Wayne defeated the Indians at 
the Falls of the Maumee river, and a fort called Fort 
Wayne was established at this point. 

Friction had existed between the English and the 
Americans from the close of the Revolution. Bad faith 

102 



^: — n- 




103 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

was charged on both sides. The English in Canada had 
encouraged the organization of the Indians against the 
Americans to the south, and it is said had paid them 
for scalps taken by their raiding parties. All along 
the border line and reaching down to the Ohio river 
there were frequent massacres of white settlers. 

It is impossible for us to realize the horror of one of 
these Indian surprises and the devastation left behind 
one of their raids. It is one of the most astounding 
paradoxes of human nature that in spite of massacres 
and outrages, in field and in home, the population 
increased. 

As the impending struggle between the states and the 
English government drew near, the Indians became more 
aggressive and their confederacies became stronger and 
more compact. 

When the declaration of war was made, in June, 1812, 
the news was at once spread by fleet-footed messengers 
among all the western tribes, and they believed the time 
had come when, with British bayonets and Indian scalp- 
ing knives, the whites were to be driven from the hunt- 
ing grounds of their fathers. 

General Hull was sent to Fort Detroit to hold the 
place against the British. The Illinois country was 
included in his command. At Chicago, Fort Dearborn 
had been built in 1803 and was held by a small garrison 
under Captain Heald. Finding that the forest paths 
were beset and guarded by bands of Indians, General 
Hull sent word to Captain Heald that if he could not 
hold the fort until aid could reach him he should with- 
draw his garrison and proceed at once to Fort Wayne. 
The message reached' Fort Dearborn on the ninth of 
August. Large forces of Indians were already gather- 

104 



REVOLUTION TO STATEHOOD 

ing about the place and Captain Heald decided to 
abandon the place. His subordinate officers protested, 
but he insisted and fixed upon the fifteenth as the time 
for their departure. 

On the evening of the twelfth Captain Heald held a 
conference with the Indians outside the fort. He 
agreed to leave the fort with all his men and to turn 
over to them all the supplies, including the ammunition, 
provided they should give him a safe escort to Fort 
Wayne. The garrison objected to giving the powder 
and ball to the Indians who might use them in an 
attack. Finally the powder was thrown into a well and 
the liquor was emptied into the river. The Indians 
learned of this fact and, believing themselves deceived 
and cheated, considered that they were freed from all 
obligations to furnish a safe escort. 

On the night of the fourteenth John Kinzie brought 
his family into the fort for protection, and the few other 
settlers in the neighborhood did the same. Wagons 
were loaded with the things needed for the trip, and 
twenty-five rounds of ammunition were dealt out to 
each man. 

At nine o'clock on the morning of the fifteenth of 
August the little cavalcade filed out from the doomed 
fortress and began its march along the sandy shore of 
the river. The Chicago river at that time had its mouth 
much farther south than at the present. It emptied 
into the lake near the present end of Madison street. 
The whole company consisted of sixty-six soldiers of the 
garrison. Captain Wells, of Fort Wayne, with thirty 
friendly Miami Indians, and about thirty settlers, 
women and children. 

When the company reached the place which is now 

105 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

the foot of Eighteenth street they were attacked by an 
overwhelming force of Indians that had been slowly 
gathering about them. The friendly Miamis fled at the 
first attack. The soldiers of the garrison and the set- 
tlers fought bravely, but in twenty minutes the struggle 
was over. About fifteen Indians were killed. Of the 
white dead there were twenty-six soldiers, twelve set- 
tlers, two women and twelve children left on the field. 
The others, consisting of Captain and Mrs. Heald, Mr^ 
Helm, twenty-five soldiers, and ele^ en women and chil- 
dren were prisoners. More than half of them were 
wounded. Most of the wounded were killed that night 
by the merciless savages. 

The story of the survivors of this massacre is thrill- 
ing. They were scattered from the banks of the 
Wabash to Mackinac. Most of them were eventually 
ransomed and returned to the white settlements. 

At the foot of Eighteenth street, near the spot where 
this awful massacre occurred, stands to-day a group of 
bronze figures upon a massive granite pedestal. It 
represents the saving of Mrs. Helm by Black Partridge, 
a friendly Indian chief, during the heat of the struggle. 
It stands there to remind us of the agonies, worse than 
death, through which our frontier forefathers passed 
as they laid deep and strong the foundations of civiliza- 
tion in this western country. 

From this time to the close of the war in 1814, 
parties of soldiers were going to and fro in the state, 
seeking out hostile Indians, burning their villages and 
destroying their crops, but there was nothing approach- 
ing a battle and little that deserved the name of warfare. 

As stated above, in 1812 the state entered upon its 
second stage of territorial government. A legislature, 

106 




MAP OP 

ILLINOIS 

SHOWING 

COUNTY BOUNDARIES 

1818. 

(ILLINOIS TY.) 



107 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

consisting of five members of the legislative council and 
seven members of the house, was elected by the inhabi- 
tants of the five counties. This general assembly held 
its first session at Kaskaskia in November and December 
of 1812. It reenacted many of the old territorial laws 
and elected Shadrach Bond to be the territorial delegate 
to Congress. During his term as delegate Bond secured 
the passage by Congress of the first preemption law. 
This law provided that when a settler had made im- 
provements upon a piece of land belonging to the 
government he could not be displaced by another pur- 
chaser until he had been given a chance to buy the land 
from the government. 

Population increased very rapidly from 1812 to 
1818. Many soldiers from Virginia, Kentucky and 
Tennessee, who came into the state to protect the settlers 
during the war, were so well pleased with the country 
that they came back with their families and became 
permanent residents. Before 1818 ten new counties 
were formed, making fifteen in all, and the total 
population had increased to about forty thousand. 

Early in 1818 a petition was presented to Congress 
through Nathaniel Pope, then the Illinois delegate, ask- 
ing an act to enable the territory of Illinois to form a 
state government. Such an act was passed April 18, 
fixing the boundaries of the state and the provisions 
under which it might be admitted to the Union. After 
much tribulation and no little scheming the conditions 
were complied with to the satisfaction of Congress, and 
the bill which made Illinois a state received the signa- 
ture of President Monroe on the fourth of December, 
1818. 



CHAPTER IX 

ACQUIRING TITLE TO THE SOIL 

It will be useful for us to review briefly the various 
claims to the soil of our state and the steps by which it 
was finally vested in the people of Illinois. 

Omitting all consideration of the original occupants, 
the Indians, we learn that in 1497 one, John Cabot, and 
his son Sebastian made certain ''voyages of discovery" 
under the patronage of the English king, Henry VII. 
In one of these voyages it is claimed that the shore of 
the continent was coasted from Labrador to the Caro- 
linas, and upon this claim was based the right of Eng- 
land to occupy and dispose of the lands within these 
latitudes and extending as far west as -the western sea — 
wheresoever that might be. Other nations did not seem 
to seriously question this claim, and upon it rests the 
original title of England to American soil. 

"In the year of our Lord 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, and 
his Sonne Sebastian, — discovered that land which no man before 
that time had attempted, on the 24th of June (July) about five 
of the clock, early in the morning." — Voyages of the English Na- 
tion to America, Vol. 1, p. 24 — Hakluyt. 

The English king in time gave charters to various 
companies for the settlement of these lands. In 1606, 
a charter, known as the Virginia charter, was given, 
with very indefinite boundary lines between the thirty- 
fourth and thirty-fifth degrees north latitude. In 

ie9 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

1609 this charter was modified, locating the lands 
of Virginia between lines two hundred miles north 
and two hundred miles south of Old Point Com- 
fort. If lines be drawn east and west as here indi- 
cated, they will follow very closely the thirty-fourth 
and fortieth parallels. By this arrangement, all the 
central and southern parts of the present Illinois fell 
within the Virginia limits. Following the original 
north by northwest line named in the 1606 charter, 
which Virginia continued to claim, all of the Illinois 
country fell within the Virginia grant. 

In 1621 a charter was given the Massachusetts colony 
which conveyed territory from *'sea to sea" between 
the fortieth and forty-eighth degrees of latitude. In 
1662 a charter was given to Connecticut conveying ter- 
ritory as wide as the present state and reaching from 
''sea to sea." 

These various charters were frequently modified, and, 
as can be easily seen, the grants of land overlapped each 
other. The truth is the king and his councilors who 
gave the charters, and the grantees who were bargaining 
for them, were all alike ignorant of the geography of 
the country which they were dividing up. It was all a 
terra incognita to them, and the most vague and indef- 
inite notions prevailed as to the location and extent 
of the New "World. 

As the result of these various charters, a strip of 
country across the extreme northern part of the present 
state of Illinois was claimed as belonging by the charter 
of 1621 to Massachusetts. Just to the south of this was 
a strip claimed by Connecticut under the charter of 1662, 
while the rest of the state was conceded to belong to 
Virginia. 

110 



ACQUIRING TITLE TO THE SOIL 

Long after these charters were granted, the French 
came up the valley of the St. Lawrence, across the Great 
Lakes and down the Mississippi valley, making theirs by 
possession the lands which the colonists held only by 
charter. This invasion and possession lasted from 1673, 
when Marquette and Joliet, as the representatives of the 
French king, crossed this country, until 1763, when, as 
the result of unsuccessful war, France ceded all of her 
possessions on the American continent to Great Britain. 

England does not seem in any way to have recog- 
nized the old charter rights of the colonies to these lands 
west of the Alleghanies after this war, but proceeded to 
treat them as she did the lands to the north of the Lakes. 

The revolution came, and in the midst of the strife and 
turmoil George Rogers Clark appeared and, in the name 
of Virginia, captured the Illinois country from the 
British in that famous Kaskaskia and Vincennes cam- 
paign of 1778-9. At once the title of Virginia to the 
Illinois country was revived, and it was at once organ- 
ized into a county of Virginia, and this was its legal 
status from 1778 to 1787. 

In March, 1784, Virginia made a conditional cession 
of all her lands west and northwest of the Ohio to the 
United States government. In April, 1785, Massa- 
chusetts joined her in this cession. In September, 1786, 
Connecticut gave up her claims. Thus the territory 
embraced in the present state of Illinois passed into 
the hands of the United States. Then followed the great 
ordinance of 1787 for the government of this territory 
northwest of the Ohio river. Under this ordinance a 
government was organized and carried on from 1790 
to 1809. During this latter period the name Illinois 
was not used to designate the territory. (It was known 
8 111 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

as Indiana territory.) But in 1809 the boundaries were 
changed, a territorial government was established, over 
the Illinois country, and the name Illinois was restored. 
In 1812 the first territorial legislature was elected, con- 
sisting of twelve members in all. In April, 1818, the 
enabling act was passed, and in December of the same 
year Illinois became a full-fledged state, one of the 
sovereign members of the Union. 

A brief outline of these various changes may help us 
to associate them more readily. 

1. The English, — by Cabot's discovery, 1497/ 

2. The Colonies by original charters — 

Virginia, 1609. 
Massachusetts, 1621. 
Connecticut, 1662. 

3. The French, by exploration and occupation, 1673- 

1763. 

4. The English, by treaty of Paris, 1763. 

5. Virginia, by conquest of George Rogers Clark, 

1778-9. 
(Ceded to the United States by treaty of 1783.) 

6. The United States, by cession — 

Virginia, 1784. 

Massachusetts, 1785. 

Connecticut, 1786. 

(Governed under the Ordinance, 1787-1809.) 

7. Illinois Territory, 1809-1818. 

(Name Illinois suppressed from 1787 to 1809.) 

8. State of Illinois from December 4, 1818. 



CHAPTER X 

THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 

Illinois is now being governed under the provisions 
of its third constitution. The first dated from the 
admission as a state. 1818, the second from 1848, and 
the third from 1870. There is a general feeling that 
a fourth constitution is greatly needed owing to the 
rapid development and marvelous changes of the past 
forty years, but the political managers upon one side 
and the people upon the other, through fear of objec- 
tionable features that might find place in a new con- 
stitution, have prevented its enactment. 

Under the ordinance of 1787 it was provided that the 
Northwest Territory should be divided up into not less 
than three states, and that to secure admission by any 
one of these states a population of not less than sixty 
thousand should be shown. When the petition from 
Illinois was received by Congress, an amendment was 
made accepting forty thousand as the requisite number. 

Our territorial delegate in Congress, Mr. Nathaniel 
Pope, succeeded also in having the northern boundary 
moved from a line running directly west from the most 
southern point of Lake Michigan to the parallel forty- 
two degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, thus giv- 
ing the state sixty miles of lake shore and securing 
Chicago harbor for Illinois instead of for Wisconsin. 
We are under a great debt of gratitude to Mr. Pope 

113 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

for his wise and statesman-like management in bring- 
ing the new state into the Union. 

Mr. Pope secured also another amendment to the 
Ordinance. It was provided that five per cent of the 
money received from the sale of public lands in the 
states should be devoted to public works, such as build- 
ing roads and digging canals. This was amended so 
that three-fifths of this money could be set aside for 
public school purposes, one-sixth of which should be 
given over for the benefit of a college or university. 
This was the foundation for our state fund for the pub- 
lic schools and for our great and growing university at 
Champaign. 

The convention for framing the first constitution met 
at Kaskaskia, August 3, 1818, and completed its work 
on the twenty-sixth of the same month. As stated else- 
where, there were then fifteen counties in the state. St. 
Clair, Madison and Gallatin sent three delegates each 
to this convention, the others two each, making a 
total of thirty-three delegates. One delegate died 
during the meeting, leaving but thirty-two in actual 
attendance. 

This constitution of 1818 was never submitted to the 
people for approval or rejection. It was comparatively 
a brief document, occupying but nine pages in the 
statute book, as against twenty-three pages of the pres- 
ent constitution. It shows very little confidence in the 
vox populi. As little as possible was left to popular 
vote for decision. The provisions were copied chiefly 
from the constitutions of Kentucky, New York, Ohio 
and Indiana. The only officers the people were per- 
mitted to elect were the governor, lieutenant governor, 
sheriff and coroner. All other officers were appointed 

114 



THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 

by or with the advice of the legislature. Comparing this 
with the provisions of the present constitution, we see 
that great advance has been made in trusting the people 
to manage their own affairs. Local self-government has 
undergone a rapid and radical change in the last three- 
quarters of a century. 

One thing this constitution did which was an advance 
upon all previous organic enactments — it abolished im- 
prisonment for debt. Article VIII, section 15, reads: 
"No person shall be imprisoned for debt unless upon 
refusal to deliver up his estate for the benefit of his 
creditors." If such a provision had existed in the con- 
stitution of Pennsylvania, Robert Morris, the financial 
patriot of the Revolution, had not been forced to spend 
four years of his old age in prison. 

This constitution gave great latitude to the legislature 
in pledging the credit of the state; this was the most 
serious weakness of the document. It led to financial 
embarrassment, bringing the state to the verge of bank- 
ruptcy. The present constitution has erected effectual 
safeguards against this tendency to contract debts. 

Next after the latitude allowed the legislature to 
abuse the credit of the state, the provision that gave 
rise to the most serious complications was that of Article 
VI, in reference to slavery. It is ambiguous and 
capable of being so construed as to permit slavery as 
effectually as it existed in Kentucky. This brought on 
the bitter contest of 1823-4, in which the anti-slavery 
party won and slavery came to an end in the state so 
far as any countenance from the law was concerned. 

When the slavery question was settled in 1824 the 
attacks upon the constitution ceased and for eighteen 
years little was said about a new constitution. In 1840- 

115 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STOEIES 

41 the legislature provided for the calling of a constitu- 
tional convention, but it failed of approval by the 
people, and nothing was done. In 1844-45 the matter 
was again taken up, and this time secured approval. 
The convention, consisting of as many delegates as there 
were members entitled to the general assembly, met at 
Springfield, June 7, 1847, and completed its work by 
the thirty-first of August; this constitution was ratified 
by the people March 6, 1848, and went into effect on the 
first day of April of that year. 

The marked change observed in comparing the 
constitutions of 1818 and 1848 is along the line of 
popular government, — the placing of greater power in 
the hands of the people. The powers of the legislature 
were curtailed both in the expending of moneys and in 
the appointment of officers. This constitution, in 
length, stands about midway between that of 1818 and 
1870, occupying about fourteen pages on the statute 
book. 

It was only a few years until the people and the press 
began to discover weaknesses and limitations in the new 
constitution that were detrimental to the best interests 
and the growth of the state. A demand went up for a 
new constitution, and in 1862 a convention was called; 
but it was in the storm and stress of the civil war, and 
it is not to be wondered at that the people refused to 
approve a document wrought out at such a time. How- 
ever, the need of a better constitution was evident to 
all, and in 1869, under more favorable conditions, a 
second convention was assembled at Springfield. This 
resulted in the present constitution, which was approved 
by the people July 2, 1870, and went into effect on the 
eighth of August of the same year. 

116 



THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS 

As it stands to-day, this is perhaps one of the best 
state constitutions in the Union. The state, however, 
in its rapid development has outgrown many of the 
provisions, and frequent patching by way of amend- 
ment has been resorted to that it may continue to 
serve its original purpose. 

The space limitations of this book preclude the 
possibility of printing in this place a copy of the 
constitution of the state, but it should be in the hands 
of each teacher and pupil who reads this chapter, and 
the main provisions should be outlined and discussed at 
some length. Familiarity with the fundamental provi- 
sions of government, either state or national, is well 
worth the time and effort necessary to secure it. 



CHAPTER XI 

CONSTITUTIONAL BOUNDARY AND DIVISIONS 

On the eighteenth of April, 1818, Congress passed an 
*' enabling act" giving the people of Illinois permission 
to form a constitution and prepare for admission to 
the Union as a state. This enabling act defined the 
boundaries v^hich the proposed state must accept. This 
boundary line is repeated in the constitution of the 
state. It read as follows: ''Beginning at the mouth 
of the Wabash river, thence up the same and with the 
line of Indiana to the northwest corner of said state; 
thence east with the line of said state to the middle of 
Lake Michigan, thence north along the middle of said 
lake to north latitude forty-two degrees and thirty 
minutes, thence west to the middle of the Mississippi 
river, and thence down along the middle of said river to 
its confluence with the Ohio, and thence up the latter 
river along its northwestern shore to the place of be- 
ginning. ' ' 

This constitutes the official boundary of the state, 
found not on the maps nor in the geographies, but in 
the constitution of the state and the enactments of 
Congress. 

This territory, covering about fifty-six thousand four 
hundred square miles, has been divided up into counties. 
There have been many changes in county lines since 
General St. Clair came with his staff down the Ohio 

118 




119 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

river on a flatboat and organized the first county of the 
state. The records show twenty-seven readjustments 
in all, St. Clair, in 1790, being the first, and Ford county, 
in 1859, being the last. There will probably be few 
changes in county lines in the future. There are now 
one hundred and two counties in the state. 

The constitution of the United States says that the 
representatives in Congress shall be apportioned among 
the states in the ratio of their population. This made 
necessary a general census. The constitution also pro- 
vides for the time of taking the census. It is taken 
every ten years. The representation from any state may 
be changed every ten years either to fewer or more mem- 
bers. Illinois has steadily increased her numbers, until 
now she has twenty-five ; consequently the state is divided 
into twenty-five congressional districts, each of whicli 
elects a representative to Congress every two years. 
{Illmois Statutes, Chapter 46, Section 150). 

The state has a legislature copied after that of the 
national Congress consisting of a senate and a house 
of representatives. The state constitution provides for 
the number of members in each house. (Art. IV, Sec. 6.) 
There are one-half as many senators as there are coun- 
ties, and three times as many representatives as there are 
senators. This gives to the state legislature fifty-one 
senators and one hundred and fifty-three representa- 
tives. The districts from which these members of the 
state legislature are elected are also subject to change 
as the population changes. {Illinois Statutes, Chapter 
46, Section 152.) The party in power at the time of 
redistricting always tries to so divide the state that as 
many as possible of the districts may be represented by 
its members. 

120 



CONSTITUTIONAL BOUNDARY 

At the present time, Cook and Lake counties have ten 
of the congressmen out of a possible twenty-five, and 
Cook has nineteen of the state senators out of a possible 
fifty-one, with fifty-seven members of the assembly out 
of a total of one hundred and fifty-three. 

In order to carry on the judicial work of the state it 
is necessary to have judicial districts and circuits. The 
judicial department is modeled after that of the national 
judicial system. The state constitution (Art. VI) pro- 
vides that ''the judicial powers, except as in this article 
is otherwise provided, shall be vested in one supreme 
court, circuit courts, county courts, justices of the peace, 
police magistrates, and such courts as may be created by 
law in and for cities and incorporated towns. ' ' Provision 
is then made for dividing the state into seven judicial 
districts, each of which may elect one judge of the 
supreme court to serve nine years. The districts can be 
changed by the state legislature, but only at the session 
next preceding the election of judges. Cook county is 
in the seventh district. 

There are circuit court divisions based upon popu- 
lation. The constitution forbids more than one for one 
hundred thousand of the population. There are at pres- 
ent seventeen such recruits not counting Cook county. 
In judicial matters Cook county has had special provi- 
sion made because of the great population massed in the 
city of Chicago. The county constitutes one judicial 
circuit, and there are also superior and criminal courts 
established by the constitution, and the legislature is for- 
bidden to include this county in the redistricting of the 
state into circuits. The constitution also provides for 
appellate court districts, the judges of which courts 
shall be the same as the judges of the circuit courts, and 

121 




MA IP ©r 

niLILHI^dDIiS 

CONGflCSSIONAL APPORTIONMENT 

of igoi 



122 



CONSTITUTIONAL BOUNDARY 



\ 



no extra compensation is allowed for this service. There 
are four such districts in the state, of which Cook county 
constitutes the first. 

In addition to the supreme, circuit and appellate 
courts as given, each county elects its own county judge, 
and if there are over fifty thousand inhabitants the 
legislature may provide for the election of a probate 
judge also. 

The following outline is intended to show the official 
organization of Cook county. In the main it represents 
the organization of other counties in the state, but be- 
cause of its great population more officers are allowed 
in this county and greater latitude is given for official ac- 
tion. 

Cook County. 

Organized, — March 4, 1831. 
Territory originally included, 

Iroquois, — separated Feb. 26, 1833. 
Will,— Separated Jan. 12, 1836. 
McHenry, — separated Jan. 16, 1836. 
DuPage, — separated Feb. 9, 1839. 
Lake, — separated March 9, 1839. 
Cook, — which remains, area 890 square miles. 
Officers and Employes. 
Elected by the People: 
County Board. 
President. 
Fourteen other members, 

( 10 from Chicago, 5 outside. ) 
Sheriff. 
County Clerk. 
County Treasurer. 
States Attorney. 
Coroner. 

Recorder of Deeds. 
Surveyor. 

123 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Five Assessors. 

Board of Review (3 members). 
Probate Judge. 
County Judge. 
Fourteen Circuit Judges. 
Twelve Superior Court Judges. 
County Supt. of Schools. 
Appointed by the County Board: 
County Attorney. 
Supt. of Public Service. 

County Civil Service Commission (3 members). 
Heads of County Institutions, 

(Poor House, County Hospital, etc., etc.). 

In most counties of the state the County Board is 
known as the Board of Supervisors, the members of 
which are elected by the various towns in the county. 
The superior and circuit courts are not organized in 
other counties as in Cook, and only a few of the larger 
counties have a probate judge. 

The duties of each of these officers and the manner in 
which the business of the county is transacted must be 
learned from the various laws and reports issued from 
time to time. 

As a matter of convenient reference, the following 
table has been arranged, giving the counties of the state 
in alphabetical order and indicating the various divi- 
sions of the state to which each belongs : 



124 



CONSTITUTIONAL BOUNDARY 



Illinois Electoral Districts. 



County. 



Adams . . . . 
Alexander 
Bond .... 
Boone • • • • 
Brown . .". 
Bureau . . . 
Calhoun . . 
Carroll . . • 

Cass 

Champaign 
Christian . 

Clark 

Clay 

Clinton ... 
Coles .... 

Cook 

Crawford . 
Cumberland 
DeKalb . . 
DeWitt . . . 
Douglas .. 
DuPage . . 
Edgar .... 
Edwards . 
Etiftngham . 
Fayette . . 

Ford 

Franklin . . 
Fulton . . . 
Gallatin . . 
Greene . . . 
Grundy . . . 
Hamilton . 
Hancock. . 
Hardin . . . 
Henderson 
Henry .... 
Iroquois . . 
Jackson . . 
Jasper . . . 
Jefferson . 
Jersey .... 
Jo Daviess 
Johnson . . 

Kane 

Kankakee . 
Kendall . . 
Knox .... 
Lake 



County seat. 



Quincy 

Cairo 

Greenville . . . . 

Belvidere 

Mount Sterling 
Princeton . . . . 

Hardin 

Mount Carroll , 

Virginia 

Urbana 

Taylorville . . . 

Marshall 

Louisville . . . . 

Carlyle 

Charleston . . . . 

Chicago 

Robinson 

Toledo 

Sycamore . . . . 

Clinton 

Tuscola 

Wheaton 

Paris 

Albion 

Effingham . . . . 

Vandalia 

Paxton 

Benton 

Lewistown . . 
Shawneetown 
Carrollton . . . , 

Morris 

McLeansboro 
Carthage .... 
Elizabethtown 
Oquawka .... 
Cambridge ... 
Watseka .... 
Murphysboro 

Newton 

Mount Vernon 
Jerseyville . . 

Galena 

Vienna 

Geneva 

Kankakee . . . 
Yorkville .... 
Galesburg . . . 
Waukegan . . . 



36 
50 
47 
8 
30 
37 
3fi 
12 
30 
24 
40 
34 
42 
42 
34 
* 

48 
40 
35 
28 
34 
41 
22 
48 
42 
40 
26 
50 
43 
48 
38 
20 
51 
32 
48 
33 
37 
20 
44 
46 
46 
38 
12 
51 
14 
20 
14 
43 



O 



15 
25 
22 
12 
20 
16 
20 
13 
20 
19 
21 
18 
24 
23 
19 
* 

23 

18 
12 
19 
19 
11 
18 
24 
23 
23 
17 
25 
15 
24 
20 
12 
24 
14 
24 
14 
15 
18 
25 
23 
23 
20 
13 
24 
11 
18 
12 
15 
10 






1 

3 

17 
8 

13 
8 

15 
8 
6 
4 
5 
4 
4 

5 

* 

2 

5 

16 

6 

6 

16 

5 

2 

4 

4 

11 

2 

9 

2 

7 

13 

2 

9 

2 

9 

14 

12 

1 

4 

2 

7 

15 

1 

16 
12 
16 
9 
17 



Judicial 
Dis. 



ft 

02 



ft 
ft 
< 



* Senatorial, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 
27, 29, 81. Congressional, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Judicial cir- 
cuit, not numbered. Appellate, 1. Supreme, 7. 

125 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 



County. 



LaSalle .. . . 
Lawrence . . 

Lee 

Livingston . 

Logan 

'Macon 

Macoupin .. 
Madison . . . 
Marion . . . . 
Marshall . . 

Mason 

Massac . . . . 
McDonough 
McHenry . . 
McLean . . . 
Menard . . . 
Mercer . . . . 
Monroe . . . 
Montgomery 
Morgan . . . 
Moultrie . . . 

Ogle 

Peoria 

Perry 

Piatt 

Pike 

Pope 

Pulaski . . . . 
Putnam . . . 
Randolph . . 
Richland . . 
Rock Island 
Saline . . . . 
Sangamon . 
Schuyler . . . 

Scott 

Shelby 

Stark 

St. Clair .. . 
Stephenson 
Tazewell . . 

Union 

Vermilion . . 
Wabash . . . 
Warren . . . 
Washington 
Wayne . . . . 

White 

Whiteside .. 

Will 

Williamson 
Winnebago . 
Woodford . . 



County seat. 



Ottawa .... 
Lawrenceville 

Dixon 

Pontiac .... 
Lincoln .... 
Decatur . . . . 
Carlinville . . 
Edwardsville 

Salem 

Lacon 

Havana . . . . 
Metropolis . 
Macomb . . . , 
Woodstock . 
Bloomington 
Petersburg . , 

Aledo 

Waterloo . . . . 
Hillsboro . . . 
Jacksonville , 
Sullivan ... 
Oregon .... 

Peoria 

Pinckneyville 
Monticello . . 

Pittsfield 

Golconda . . . , 
Mound City . 
Hennepin . . . 
Chester .... 

Olney 

Rock Island 
Harrisburg . . 
Springfield . , 
Rushville . . . 
Winchester . , 
Shelbyville . , 

Toulon 

Belleville . . . 
Freeport . . . , 

Pekin 

Jonesboro . . , 
Danville . . . , 
Mount Carmel 
Monmouth . . , 
Nashville . . . 
Fairfield . . . , 

Carmi 

Morrison . . . 

Joliet , 

Marion 

Rockford . . . 
Eureka 









Judicial 




03 




Dis. 


,__( 










o 


02 
CO 

Ol 


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a3 

a 




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ft 


02 


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CO 


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59 


12 


13 


2 


5 


48 


23 


2 


4 


2 


35 


13 


15 


2 


6 


16 


17 


11 


2 


3 


28 


17 


11 


3 


3 


28 


19 


6 


3 


3 


38 


21 


7 


3 


2 


47 


22 


3 


4 


2 


42 


23 


4 


4 


2 


16 


16 


10 


2 


5 


30 


20 


8 


3 


4 


51 


24 


1 


4 


1 


32 


14 


9 


3 


4 


8 


11 


17 


2 


6 


26 


17 


11 


3 


3 


30 


20 


4 


3 


4 


33 


14 


14 


2 


4 


44 


22 


3 


4 


1 


38 


21 


4 


3 


2 


45 


20 


7 


3 


4 


24 


19 


6 


3 


3 


10 


13 


15 


2 


6 


18 


16 


10 


2 


5 


44 


25 


3 


4 


1 


24 


19 


6 


3 


3 


36 


20 


8 


3 


2 


51 


24 


1 


4 


1 


50 


25 


1 


4 


1 


16 


16 


10 


■ 2 


5 


44 


25 


3 


4 


1 


46 


23 


2 


4 


2 


33 


14 


14 


2 


4 


51 


24 


1 


4 


1 


45 


21 


7 


3 


3 


30 


15 


8 


3 


4 


36 


20 


7 


3 


2 


40 


19 


4 


3 


2 


37 


16 


10 


2 


5 


49 


22 


3 


4 


1 


12 


13 


15 


2 


6 


30 


16 


10 


3 


3 


50 


25 


1 


4 


1 


22 


18 


5 


3 


3 


48 


23 


2 


4 


1 


22 


14 


9 


2 


4 


44 


22 


3 


4 


1 


46 


24 


2 


4 


1 


48 


24 


2 


4 


1 


35 


13 


14 


2 


6 


41 


11 


12 


2 


7 


50 


25 


1 


4 


1 


10 


12 


i7 


2 


6 


16 


17 


11 


2 


5 



126 



CHAPTER XII 

THE CAPITALS OF ILLINOIS 

In the story of the occupation and settlement of 
Illinois by the French we found that the interests of the 
colonists gathered about a few settlements on the penin- 
sula reaching from the mouth of the Kaskaskia river 
northward to a point nearly opposite the present city of 
St. Louis. Here, in Kaskaskia, St. Phillipe, Chartres, 
Cahokia, and Prairie du Rocher, the people gathered in 
greatest numbers; here their schools and churches were 
established, and here they were wont to turn for their 
laws and judicial proceedings. When the country 
passed into the hands of the English, these centers of 
population, of which Kaskaskia was the chief, were still 
recognized as the official centers of government. After 
1787, when the American settlers began making homes 
in the great Northwest, they were not so particular about 
clinging to the rivers and water-courses as the French 
had been; so settlements sprang up in all parts of the 
waste of prairies and wilderness of woods. 

In 1772, when Fort Chartres was destroyed by the 
Mississippi floods, the English moved their seat of 
government for the Illinois country to Kaskaskia. 
After George Rogers Clark had taken possession of the 
country in the name of Virginia, Colonel John Todd set 
up a temporary government at Kaskaskia. This settle- 
ment continued to be the chief town of the Illinois 
9 127 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

country until 1800, when, under Governor William 
Henry Harrison, Illinois became a part of the Indiana 
territory, and the seat of government was fixed at 
Vincennes. But in 1809, when Illinois territory was 
organized, Kaskaskia again became the seat of govern- 
ment. It was here in 1812 that the first territorial 
legislature of Illinois met, and it was here also that the 
convention of 1818 met to frame the constitution for the 
new state. This constitution provided that the seat of 
government should be at Kaskaskia until the general 
assembly should otherwise provide. 

There was no capitol building at Kaskaskia. Tempo- 
rary provision had to be made for the accommodation 
of the assemblies called to meet there. The first legis- 
lature which convened at Kaskaskia on November 25, 
1812, met in a rough building of uncut limestone, with 
steep roof and unpainted boards, located in the center 
of a square. It is claimed by some that this building 
was the one occupied by the Commandant Rocheblave 
when George Rogers Clark captured the place in 1778. 
The first floor, a low, gloomy room, was fitted up for 
the House, and a small chamber above was arranged for 
the Senate. All the twelve members, it is said, boarded 
at one house and lodged in one room. 

The first session of the legislature under the constitu- 
tion of 1818 appointed a committee of five members to 
locate a place for a new capital, with the provision 
that the new location should remain the capital for at 
least twenty years. The present site of Vandalia was 
selected, and in 1820 the records, documents and ar- 
chives of the state government were removed to that 
place in a small wagon. 

The first statehouse consisted of a small two-story 

128 



THE CAPITALS OF ILLINOIS 

wooden structure, the lower floor of which was for the 
accommodation of the house, while the upper floor, 
divided into two rooms,' was for the senate and the state 
officers. In December, 1823, this building was totally 
destroyed by fire, not a scrap of furniture being saved 
from the flames. At once a subscription was circulated 
to obtain funds for erecting a new building, and within 
three days sufficient funds were obtained to start anoth- 
er building. This building, costing about fifteen 
thousand dollars, stood until 1836, when it was torn 
down to make place for a more commodious brick struc- 
ture, which still stands, doing service as Fayette 
County's courthouse. 

Before the twenty-year period had expired, a number 
of cities were urging their claim to be made the capital 
of the state. Alton, Vandalia, Springfield, Peoria and 
many others took active part in securing petitions and 
votes in favor of their claims. The legislature was slow 
to act, but finally in the session of 1837, by the persistent 
and diplomatic pressure of some eight or nine men, of 
whom Abraham Lincoln was one, Springfield was chosen. 
Money was appropriated by the legislature for a new 
building, and a similar amount, with grounds, was 
donated by the city. 

The first legislature to assemble in Springfield was 
that of the second session of the eleventh general 
assembly. It met on the ninth of December, 1839. The 
building was not completed, and the different depart- 
ments of the legislature were accommodated in the 
various churches of the city. The building when com- 
pleted cost about $250,000, and for years was the 
wonder of the country round about. But twenty years 
of growth demanded a greater building. The state had 

129 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

outgrown its capitol. The legislature of 1865 raised the 
question of a new building, and at once an agitation 
sprang up for a change of location. Peoria was the only 
dangerous rival to the capital city. After a heated 




The State Capitol at Springfield. 



campaign, the matter was finally settled by a vote of one 
hundred to seventy-four in the legislature, June 7, 1871, 
in favor of Springfield. This probably settled the 
question of the location for all time to come. The new 
building is a magnificent structure » costing about four 
million dollars, and was completed in 1887. 



CHAPTER XIII 

EVOLUTION OF THE ILLINOIS SCHOOL LAW 

In the ordinance of 1787, Article III, it is declared 
that "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary 
to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
schools and the means of education shall forever be 
encouraged." 

In the enabling act, passed by Congress, April 18, 
1818, we find {Section 6, Proposition 1) : "The section 
numbered 16 in every township . . . shall be 
granted to the state for the use of the inhabitants of such 
township for the use of schools." Proposition 3 of the 
same section provides that three per cent of the proceeds 
of all public lands sold in the state "shall be appro- 
priated by the legislature of the state for the encourage- 
ment of learning, of which one-sixth part shall be 
exclusively bestowed upon a college or university." 

Here we have the beginnings of our public school 
system. It was born with the state. The same act that 
created the state provided the means and made it 
obligatory upon the legislature to organize a system of 
education. These provisions and the obligations attach- 
ing thereto were accepted by the convention at Kaskas- 
kia, August 16, 1818. 

It seems strange that the constitution drawn up by the 
same Kaskaskia convention should contain no reference 
whatever to the subject of schools or of school education. 

131 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

The constitution of 1848 contained no more than a 
brief passing reference or two on the subject of school 
taxation. But the constitution of 1870 contains ample 
recognition of the subject. Article VIII opens with this 
section: ''The general assembly shall provide a thor- 
ough and efficient system of free schools whereby all 
children of this state may receive a good common school 
education." Then follow the provisions concerning the 
administration of this constitutional obligation. 

While the early state constitutions were strangely 
silent upon the subject, the legislatures were not alto- 
gether inactive. The first effort to frame a school law 
was made in 1825. Doubtless the members of the legis- 
lature thought they were inaugurating and setting in 
operation a most liberal and comprehensive plan for the 
education of the youth of the state. Unfortunately, the 
most comprehensive part of the plan was placed in the 
preamble. Nearly all of the provisions of the law had to 
do solely with the administration of the funds provided 
by the general government through its land grants. 
The law did not prescribe the studies that were to be 
taught, nor did it indicate the manner of licensing the 
teachers nor the qualifications they should possess. The 
most limited powers for local taxation were provided, 
and the taxes were to be "levied either in cash or good 
merchantable produce at cash prices." Even this pro- 
vision was made valueless by the next legislature, which 
enacted that no person might be "taxed for the support 
of any free school unless his or her free-will had first 
been obtained in writing. " 

There was some patching of the provisions by various 
legislatures until 1845, when the whole school legisla- 
tion was revised and previous acts not reincorporated 

132 



EVOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL LAW 

were repealed. In this revision it was specifically stated 
that the schools must be taught in the English language 
and from text-books printed in English. It also speci- 
fied the subjects, ''orthography, reading in English, 
penmanship, arithmetic, English grammar, modern 
geography, and the history of the United States. ' ' 

More patching was done by the succeeding legislatures 
until 1849, after the new constitution had gone into 




The Northern Illinois State Normal School at Dekalb. 

effect, when a new revision of the school law was made. 
Then again in 1857 another revision was made, which is 
the fullest in detail of any attempt up to that time. In 
1865 a revision was made again, in an attempt to meet 
the exigencies of the growing school system of the state. 
After the adoption of the last constitution in 1870, a 
new and more complete school law was enacted. This 
law was repeatedly amended until 1889, when it was 
thoroughly revised and recast to the form in which we 
now have it. Of course many amendments have been 
made since 1889, and, without doubt, the interests of the 

133 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

schools of the state would be subserved by a general 
revision, simplification and codification of the school 
laws now in force. To this task let us hope the educa- 
tional commission provided by the legislature of 1907 
will set itself with broad-minded and earnest endeavor.* 

The above is a brief outline of the manner in which 
our school law has grown at the hands of the legislators. 
It does not hint at the great struggles, the anxious days 
and nights, the pleadings and petitionings, the speeches 
and letters, the heart burnings and sacrifices of the 
friends of the public school system in their effort to 
wring from the political office-holders of the state, step 
by step, a worthy and creditable system of public 
schools. The heroic struggle waged by such men as 
John M. Peck, J. B. Turner, Ninian W. Edwards, W. F. 
Arney, Charles E. Hovey, James H. Blodgett, Samuel 
Willard, Newton Bateman, W. M. Powell and Richard 
Edwards, B. G. Roots, and a host of others too numerous 
to mention, in their efforts to arouse the conscience of 
the state and to secure enactments by the legislatures, 
is worthy a place beside the story of our other heroes 
who made possible our greatness and maintained our 
honor upon other fields. 

A copy of the latest school law should be at hand for 
reference by all who read this section. An outline of the 
general provisions should be made so that discussions 
of the subject may be intelligible. 

* Since the above was written the Educational Commission, 
appointed by Governor Deneen, reported a complete codification 
of the school laws of the state. This report, by a simpler classifi- 
cation, reduces the number of pages about one-third and makes it 
a much more convenient source of- reference. The legislature, 
May, 1909, adopted the report thus giving us the latest revision 
of our school law. 

134 



CHAPTER XIY 

SLAVERY IN ILLINOIS 

We remember (Chapter Y) that in 1720 one Frangois 
Renault took a gang of black slaves up the Mississippi. 
He bought these slaves at St. Domingo on his way over 
to this country. He came up as far as the Kaskaskia 
country, where he established himself. The following 
year, with a part of his slaves and some white miners, 
he went up to the present site of Galena and opened lead 
mines. The mining ventures were not satisfactory, and, 
after a few years, Renault, discouraged, returned to 
France, but his cargo of slaves was sold and distributed 
among the planters of the Illinois country. This was the 
beginning of slavery in Illinois, — just a hundred years 
later than its introduction into the Virginia colony. 
From that time until 1860 the question of slavery did 
not cease to agitate the people of Illinois. 

France had given the colonists legal permission to 
hold slaves, and when, in 1763, England, by treaty, came 
into possession of the country, the French inhabitants 
were guaranteed their right and title to their slave 
property. When the United States took over this terri- 
tory from Virginia in 1785, it was supposed that this 
same protection was given in the deed by which Virginia 
ceded her interests in the lands. But when in 1787, the 
great ordinance was framed, this stipulation was ig- 

135 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

nored, and it was enacted that ''There shall be neither 
slavery nor involuntary servitude in said territory 
otherwise than in the punishment of crime." 

But the slaves were here, and the ordinance did not 
remove them. The whole territory in 1800 had about 
one hundred and thirty slaves. In 1810 the Illinois 
country alone had about one hundred and seventy, and 
in 1820 the number seems to have increased to about one 
thousand — this, however, probably included what were 
known as ''indentured servants." 

The early settlements in Illinois were in the southern 
part of the state. They were made by people from 
slave-holding states, and it was very natural that the 
institution of slavery should find strong defense among 
them. Here and there were men of anti-slavery prin- 
ciples who insisted upon the enforcement of the provi- 
sions of the ordinance, but such were in the minority and 
could do little against the great mass of settlers and the 
interested slave-holding population along the border. 
It was impossible to enforce the law, although numerous 
subterfuges and evasions were made necessary in order 
to protect the increasing slave property. 

In 1803 a law was passed in the territorial legislature 
permitting persons to hold indentured servants and 
requiring the children of such servants to serve their 
masters until they were twenty-eight or thirty years of 
age. The slaves were taken before a notary and made 
oath that they had voluntarily entered into an agree- 
ment, as indentured servants, with the master, and the 
shackles of slavery were as effectually fastened upon 
them as if they were in Kentucky. The law gave the 
master thirty days in which to remove any servant who 
should decline to be a voluntary slave, and of course any 

• 136 



SLAVERY IN ILLINOIS 

such were hurried across the river and sold on legal slave 
territory. 

The laws enacted against the black man in these years 
were barbarous and degrading. No free negro could 
live in the state unless he could show a certificate of 
freedom witnessed by some court. Any black man with- 
out such certificate could be arrested and sold as a 
runaway slave. Any servant found ten miles from 
home without a written permit could be whipped. A 
long list of such provisions, all repugnant to the letter 
and spirit of the ordinance which gave the legislature 
its existence, were passed by the territorial legislatures, 
all calculated to fasten slavery upon the state and to 
make it almost impossible for the contagious sentiment 
of freedom to spread, either among the whites or the 
blacks. 

There were stirring events in those days — from 1800 
to 1825 — in all the southern half of the state when this 
struggle for slavery or freedom was in progress. We 
cannot narrate incidents nor give in detail the stories 
that grew up in this connection, although many of them 
are intensely interesting. 

When Illinois became a state, in 1818, she was obliged 
to repudiate slavery in her constitution. But this did 
not drive it out. We remember that the central part 
of the state was being filled with settlers at this time. 
The new counties were extending toward the north, and 
many of the people came from states where slavery did 
not exist, and sentiment against the institution was 
being cultivated by constant agitation. It was apparent 
to all that a bitter struggle was at hand to determine 
whether freedom or slavery should prevail in the state. 

In 1822 the contest for governor was waged upon the 

137 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

slavery issue. Edward Coles, the anti-slavery candi- 
date, was elected; but there were two opposing can- 
didates, both of whom favored slavery, and together 
they received more than half the votes. The legislature 
was overwhelmingly pro-slavery. 

Governor Coles at once forced the issue upon the legis- 
lature by recommending the immediate emancipation 
of all slaves in the state. The opposition, in their anger 
and supposed strength, determined to have an amend- 
ment made to the constitution legalizing slavery in the 
state. Here, then, the issue was fairly stated in a call 
for a constitutional convention, and the appeal was made 
to the ballot box. 

The campaign of 1824 was perhaps the bitterest 
political battle ever fought in the state. Men, women 
and children took part in the agitations and discussions. 
Every voter was sought out and almost forced to g6 to 
the polls. The election proved a decided victory for the 
anti-slavery party. The cause of slavery in the state 
was dead. The opposition submitted to the will of the 
majority, and soon good-feeling prevailed where the 
struggle had been most bitter, and never again was an 
effort made to legalize slavery in Illinois. 

Illinois was redeemed from the curse of a slave state, 
but that did not remove the vexed question from the 
minds of her people. Just across the Ohio lay Ken- 
tucky, a slave state, and just beyond the Mississippi 
was Missouri, — both of them within swimming distance 
of free territory. Human nature cannot be put in 
bonds to legal enactments even when the laws are felt 
to be righteous; and when they are felt to be unright- 
eous, any expedient but open rebellion will often be 
used to evade and do what is felt to be justice. 

138 



SLAVEBY IN ILLINOIS 

Slavery is one of those questions that arouse the 
passions and stir the blood pf all who listen to its story. 
It seems that the further removed the listener is from 
the field of actual contact, the more he is aroused and the 
more violent is his denunciation. 

Thousands of slaves escaped across the rivers into 
Illinois, and here they generally found champions and 
aids. White men organized societies with secret pass- 
words and means of transportation for hurrying all such 
across the state to the Canadian frontier, which, could 
they but reach, guaranteed freedom. Many and bitter 
were the contests on Illinois soil over these runaway 
slaves; but the '* underground railroad," the secret 
routes of travel for the escaping slave, continued to do 
an extensive business, and many a black man and 
woman traveled to liberty. 

There were men who dared to risk their property and 
their lives in speaking and writing against slavery in 
those days, and every man who did this whether in 
Boston or in Illinois, was in danger of mobs and ropes 
and bullets. Graves were opened and closed over many 
an advocate for freedom long before the lines of blue 
and gray faced each other upon southern battlefields. 

The most prominent victim to the rage of the slave- 
holding sentiment furnished by Illinois was Elijah P. 
Love joy, who after suffering various personal abuses 
and mobbings, after having four printing presses de- 
stroyed because he insisted upon publishing a paper in 
which he opposed the holding of slaves, was shot and 
killed at Alton on the night of November 7, 1837. 

Lovejoy was killed by a mob. No one was ever pun- 
ished for the crime, but it seemed to startle the state 
and to bring before all rational people the supreme im- 

139 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

portance of protecting the rights to a free expression 
of opinion on the part of the citizens of the state. This 
did not end mob violence, but from this time on it was 
less and less dangerous to stand in defense of freedom, 
until the bloody civil war came, bearing on its forefront 
the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, — also a citizen 
of Illinois, — under whose leadership slavery passed for- 
ever from the history of the United States. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE BLACK HAWK WAR 

From the day when Joliet and Marquette stood at the 
outskirts of the Indian village shouting for the inhabit- 
ants to come out and tell who they were, until 1832, 
this Illinois country had been the home of the red men. 
Long before that, they had roamed at will over these 
vast prairies, chasing the buffalo and the deer, setting 
their traps in the forests, catching fish from the streams, 
and gathering their harvests of corn and beans from 
the fertile hillsides. A hundred and fifty years had 
come and gone, bringing marvelous changes in their 
wake. The curling smoke from Indian wigwams along 
the Wabash, the Ohio, the Embarrass, the Illinois, had 
grown fainter and fainter, until it had entirely dis- 
appeared. Westward the white army of invasion had 
pushed its way until the Indian had been thrust beyond 
the great Father of Waters. In his slow but sullen 
retreat he had learned of the customs and vices of the 
men who came with the woodman's ax, the shovel and 
the plow. He made better wigwams and huts; he 
planted more and hunted less ; he wore more clothes but 
drank more whisky and used more powder and ball. He 
had suffered much from slaughter, from burnings and 
devastations, from outrages in cold blood and in anger, 
from treachery ajid deceit. The white man had been 

141 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 



his evil angel, and, like some Nemesis, still pursued him, 
crying for blood and land. 

The red man had repaid the debt of ingratitude. 




Black Hawk {Ma-Ka-Tai-Mo-She-Kia- 
Kiah), war leader of the Sacs and 
Foxes in 1832. 

{From a lithograph portrait in McKen- 
ney's "History of the Indian Tribes of 
'North America'' and reproduced hy per- 
mission of the Chicago Historical So- 
ciety.) 



treachery 
blood with 
est. For 
wigwam 
tenantless, 
scalps o f 
men had 



and 
inter- 
every 
left 

five 

white 

been 



nailed to the tent 
poles of the sav- 
ages. For every 
village of huts 
burned or field 
of beans de- 
stroyed, a white 
man's house had 
gone up in 
flames and his 
children had 
gone fatherless 
to bed. It was 
a long, bloody 
tragedy, and 
the time has 
come when we 
shall lift the 
curtain for the 



last act so far as Illinois is concerned. 

Our state has had an honorable career. She can point 

^o a proud record and a long list of worthy men and 

women whom neither hunger nor cold, flood nor drouth, 

142 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR 

suffering nor death, could quail or turn aside from the 
one great work of mapping out an inheritance for their 
successors in this beautiful valley of the great river. 
But in recounting all the deeds of daring and danger, 
in unrolling the tablets of honor and greatness, let none 
point to the story of the Black Hawk War. 

Black Hawk was an Indian leader. He was not a 
ruling chief according to Indian custom, but was a head 
man in time of war. He had many of the character- 
istics of leadership and some of the marks of great gen- 
eralship. He was crafty, daring, independent and 
brave. Above all, he was proud, and gloried in the 
savagery of his race, hating the white man and all his 
customs and civilization. He belonged to the tribe of 
Sacs. This tribe had originally lived in the region of 
Lake Ontario, but had been crowded westward and still 
farther west until they located on the Rock river, in 
Illinois, near its juncture with the Mississippi. At 
some time in the history of the tribe it had come in 
contact with the tribe of Fox Indians, and, both belong- 
ing to northeastern tribes and both being pressed by 
the enemy and in enforced retreat, they coalesced, form- 
ing a confederated tribe known as the Sacs and Foxes. 
At the time we come to know them in this story, Keokuk 
was the rightful chief of the tribe. 

Sometime soon after Tonti had left the Rock, these 
Indians had come into possession of the country around 
the mouth of the Rock river, and even claimed the 
country as far west as the middle of the present state of 
Iowa. Their chief village and headquarters was near 
Rock Island on the banks of the Rock river. Here they 
had lived for years, and here they had erected a good 
class of houses to the number of five hundred, capable 
10 143 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

of sheltering several thousand people. Around this 
village they had cleared some seven hundred acres of 
ground, and upon it they cultivated their yearly crops 
of corn and beans. One of the most attractive spots 
to-day along this most beautiful river in Illinois is the 
height of land known as Black Hawk's watch-tower. A 
summer hotel has been placed on this eminence, and here 
the resorter can stand on the white man 's porch and look 
up and down the river, with all its broad and shimmer- 
ing valley as it reaches away for miles through distant 
fields and meadows, and reflect that here the Indian 
stood, looking out over the same natural scenery, seeing 
the fires and homesteads of the hated enemies of his 
race growing ever nearer and nearer. Here he could 
stand and watch his squaws planting their seed or 
gathering their harvests, see his young men practicing 
games of the chase or of war, or bathing in the silver 
stream that flowed at his feet; see on the adjacent hill- 
side the silent graves of his fathers where for genera- 
tions they had been laid to rest. No generous soul can 
stand on this spot and recall the story of Black Hawk 
without a tinge of shame creeping over his face as he 
looks and remembers. It was here, probably, that Black 
Hawk was born in 1767, and here he grew to manhood. 
He was born after the French and Indian War, under 
the regime of the British, and to them he was always 
loyal, and perhaps from them he received the fatal 
suggestions that lead to his downfall. 

After the Revolutionary War our government was 
very active in making treaties with the Indian tribes 
in the process of getting peaceable possession of their 
lands, that they might be sold to settlers. In this way 
most of the lands in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois had been 

144 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR 

turned over to the whites, and the Indians had moved on 
to the westward. The wave of immigration and settle- 
ment had passed the Illinois river, and there was a de- 
mand for more of the Indian lands. 

In 1804, W^illiam Henry Harrison was governor of 
Indiana territory, of which Illinois was at that time a 
part. He convened the Indian chiefs at St. Louis, five 
chiefs representing the Sacs and Foxes and the Winneba- 
goes, it is said, and there entered into a treaty with them 
by which they agreed to cede to the United States all 
the lands between the Illinois river and the Mississippi, 
and also a large body of land lying in Wisconsin. In 
all, this treaty covered about fifteen million acres of 
land, a princely kingdom, and for it the United States 
was to take these tribes into its friendship and to make 
to the Sacs and Foxes an annual payment of one 
thousand dollars in goods. It can be seen that Governor 
Harrison valued friendship pretty high. Black Hawk 
took no part in this transaction, and he declared that 
the chiefs were made drunk and persuaded to sign the 
treaty. This treaty provided that the tribes might re- 
tain possession of the lands until they were actually 
sold, and that in the meantime no citizens of the United 
States were to be allowed to make settlements upon the 
lands. 

Upon the breaking out of the War of 1812, the Sacs 
and Foxes offered their services to the United States, 
but were refused, and they then gave their aid to the 
British. At the close of the war a new treaty was made 
with the Indians, but Black Hawk did not sign this 
treaty either. In 1827 the Winnebagoes made an out- 
break upon the settlers and were put down by military 
force, and several of the leaders were executed. Black 

145 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Hawk was believed to have been in part responsible for 
this outbreak, and was kept a prisoner for some time, 
but was finally released. Some three years later than 
this, in 1830, another treaty was made with the Indians 
at Prairie du Chien. The Sacs and Foxes were repre- 
sented at this gathering by Keokuk, their chief. He 
signed the treaty for his tribe. In this treaty Black 
Hawk again took no part. This treaty ceded all the 
lands east of the Mississippi to the United States, and 
Keokuk agreed to remove his people to the west side of 
the river. This he succeeded in doing except so far as 
Black Hawk's following was concerned. 

In the spring of 1831, when Black Hawk and his band 
of men and women, after a winter of hunting, returned 
to their village on the Rock river, they found it occupied 
by the whites, and it was said that the very ground on 
which stood the Hawk's cabin had been bought by a 
fur-trader. War seemed certain, but by some diplomacy 
upon the part of a few white men an agreement was 
reached by which both whites and Indians were to re- 
main in the village and the lands were to be divided 
between them for cultivation. Of course trouble broke 
out. The whites complained of abuses by the Indians, 
and the Indians made counter claims of destroyed 
crops, burned cabins and indignities offered to Indian 
men and women. It is very probable that the Indians 
were the greater sufferers, but, be that as it may, a call 
was sent to the governor asking for state aid to repel the 
Indians, who were represented as being upon the verge 
of a general outbreak. Governor Reynolds at once 
responded by calling out the militia and also sending 
w^ord to General Gaines in charge of the United States 
garrison, asking for cooperation. On the seventh of 

146 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR 

June a conference was held at Fort Armstrong, on Rock 
Island, between Governor Reynolds and General Gaines 
on the part of the whites, and some twenty or more 
Indians, including Keokuk and Black Hawk. 

An agreement was drawn up and signed by both 
sides. In this agreement the Indians promised to remove 
to the west side of the river and to remain there and to 
keep in control the unruly members of their tribe. 
Rations were distributed among the Indians, who were 
in an almost starving condition, then they all withdrew 
to the west side of the river, and the war scare was 
over. The militia was disbanded and with the governor 
returned to their homes. 

Black Hawk had gone to the west side of the river 
with his people, but he was discontented and went with 
the feelings of a man who is acting under compulsion, 
suffering from a wrong. In April of the following year 
(1832), gathering his people about him to the number 
of several hundred, he recrossed the river. He passed 
by the village which had been his home for so many 
years, and proceeded on up the Rock river. General 
Atkinson, who was in command of the garrison at Fort 
Armstrong, sent word to him that he was violating his 
treaty and ordered him to return. The Hawk replied 
that he was on his way to the home of the Winnebagoes, 
who had invited him to come among them to raise a 
crop.. 

Doubtless, Black Hawk knew that he was breaking 
his treaty obligations by crossing the 'river. Doubtless 
he also reasoned that so long as he refrained from com- 
mitting any outrages or in any way disturbing the 
whites, he would be permitted to go his way undisturbed. 
When he reached a town of the Winnebagoes, about 

147 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

forty miles up the Rock river, he became convinced that 
this tribe did not intend to give him any aid, but would 
simply use him and his people for their own advantage 
in dealing with the whites. He decided to return to his 
quarters beyond the Mississippi when, to his surprise, 
he learned that the whites had called out their army, 
declared war against him, and were on his track. 
Angered and desperate, he decided to continue on his 
way up the river. He proceeded to the neighborhood of 
Dixon and here made a temporary halt. 

When Black Hawk crossed the Mississippi, the whole 
border region sent forth the cry of alarm. The savages 
were loose and on the warpath. The governor of the 
state was appealed to for immediate assistance, and he 
promptly replied. Early in May, about two thousand 
militiamen from the state and about five hundred regu- 
lars under General Atkinson were assembled at Fort 
Armstrong, ready for an advance movement. Among 
the first to volunteer service for the state in this 
war was Abraham Lincoln. He was then only twenty- 
three years of age. He was elected captain of his 
company. When the war was over and he was mus- 
tered out at Whitewater, Wisconsin, he walked home, a 
distance of over two hundred miles. 

Black Hawk had followed the Rock River, and up this 
stream. Governor Reynolds with his two thousand 
militiamen on land, and General Atkinson with his five 
hundred regulars and the provisions, by boat, started 
out on the ninth of May. Those of us who have lived in 
this region about the first of May can imagine the time 
this force of raw recruits had plowing through the mud 
and enduring the endless rains that are sure accompani- 
ments of this season. Black Hawk kept in advance. 

148 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR 

The army reached Dixon 's ford in about three days, and 
here they learned that Black Hawk's band had sepa- 
rated in order to hunt for food. At this place the army 
was increased by some three or four hundred men under 
Major Stillman and Major Bailey, who had recruited 
these men along the frontier to help put down the In- 
dians, These two undisciplined and rude companies of 
frontiersmen insisted upon being allowed to scout the 
country in the effort to find the Hawk and bring him 
to a stand. This they were given permission to do, so 
on the thirteenth of May they started out from Dixon 
and marched to the northeast nearly thirty miles, reach- 
ing a small stream on the evening of the fourteenth, 
and here they decided to camp, not suspecting any In- 
dians in the neighborhood. Scarcely were they dis- 
mounted when their attention was called to three In- 
dians bearing a white flag. It is said, and let us hope it 
is true, that many of Stillman 's men had been drinking 
and were too drunken to know what they were doing. 
Be that as it may, a shout went up, and, mounting in 
hot haste, the savages were charged and driven with 
lashings and beating into the camp. Soon five more 
Indians were seen upon a hill, and chase was again given 
and two of these were killed, while the other three 
escaped to Black Hawk's camp, two or three miles away, 
where they reported to their chief that they alone of all 
his truce party were left alive. 

What had happened was this: When Black Hawk 
observed the advance of the white men he supposed that 
they were being led by General Atkinson, with whom 
he was well acquainted. He decided to ask for a parley-. 
So he sent two of his men forward with a flag of truce, 
and in order to know just what might befall them he 

149 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

had sent five braves to watch them from a distance. It 
was ithese truce parties that Stillman's drunken soldiers 
had seen and chased, shooting them to death. When 
Black Hawk learned how his overtures for a parley had 
been received, he was filled with indignation and wrath. 
Gathering his few braves about him, mounted on ponies, 
he set out to meet the enemy. As they reached the 
open fields they beheld Stillman's men, three hundred 
strong rushing toward them. They retired behind a 
fringe of trees and waited the coming of their white 
foe. As the militia approached, beholding the Indians, 
they came to a sudden stand. But Black Hawk, utter- 
ing the war-whoop, dashed out upon them with his little 
company numbering not more than fifty. Without fir- 
ing a shot, the frontiersmen wheeled their horses and 
dashed away, with the Indians in full pursuit. At 
dark the Indians called a halt, but all night long the 
frightened militia kept on through swamps and creeks 
until they dashed into Dixon, twenty-five miles away, 
and spread the report that the whole Indian force, 
thousands strong, were sweeping the country behind 
them. Many of them did not stop even here, but 
hurried on, not dismounting until they reached their 
homes and were safe in the arms of their families. 
The whites had eleven men killed in this encounter. 
The next day the entire army of twenty-five hundred 
men marched to the scene of the conflict, where they 
found and buried the eleven men lost in Stillman's 
rout. 

The defeat of Stillman's party completely demoral- 
ized the militia force. The men demanded that they be 
discharged and permitted to go home. The governor 
at once called for a new levy of two thousand volunteers, 

150 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR 

and, inarching the demoralized militia to Ottawa, he 
discharged them. General Atkinson with the regulars 
went to Dixon to await the coming together of the new 
recruits. 

The effect of Stillman's blunder was to expose the 
entire Illinois frontier to the merciless warfare of the 
savage. Black Hawk felt that he had been mistreated 
in his attempt to conduct an honorable armistice and 
arrange for terms of return to the west side of the 
river. His band and all they could incite to take part 
with them were turned loose to burn and plunder 
wherever they could find a white man or a white man's 
settlement. So the border line, from Galena by the way 
of Princeton, Peru and Ottawa, with their outlying 
settlements, was made the scene of carnage and blood- 
shed. A number of settlers were killed in open conflict 
or from ambush, and several skirmishes occurred 
between forces of the white men and the Indians; but 
about the twenty-second of June, Black Hawk, after a 
defeat at Kellogg 's grove, retreated toward the north. 
He was folloAved by General Atkinson with the whole 
American force, amounting to about four thousand men. 
Black Hawk took refuge among the hills of Wisconsin, 
and the discouraged white troops were divided into 
several groups and placed where they might protect the 
frontier. One detachment of these troops under Gen- 
eral Henry learned ^that Black Hawk was stationed on 
the Rock river toward the north. They immediately 
started in pursuit with about one thousand men. Black 
Hawk retreated to the Wisconsin river. He passed by 
the site of the present Madison and, pushing on, was 
overtaken on the bluffs of the Wisconsin about twenty- 
five miles beyond. Here he made a stand and a severe 

151 



LAKE 
MICHIGAJSi 




The black line indicates the 
route Lincom is supposed to 
have followed with the army 
as far as Whitewater where 
he was dismissed When the 
army started from near Otta- 
wa, after the loth of lune to 
follow the Indians up RocK 
River. Lincoln's battalion was 
sent towards the northwest and joined the main 
army near Lake Koshkonong early in July 
Soon after he went to Wh.tewater where, about 
the middle of the month, his battalion was dis- 
banded, and he returned by foot and canoe to 
New Salem The dotted line shows the route 
he is supposed to have taken The towns named 
on the map are those with which Lincoln was 
connected either in bis legal or his political Hfe. 



152 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR 

battle was fought. More than one hundred and fifty 
Indians fell in this slaughter, while but one white man 
was lost. Black Hawk crossed the river and started 
for the Mississippi, hoping to reach it and to cross before 
his enemy could overtake him. The Indian band was 
reduced to the verge of starvation. They peeled the 
bark from the trees for food as they went. Many of 
their wounded and starved fell out of the ranks and died 
along the trail. By such signs they marked the line 
of their retreat from the Wisconsin to the banks of the 
Mississippi. Behind them was the relentless army of 
destruction. 

About the first of August the Indian refugees reached 
the bluffs of the Mississippi, near the mouth of the Bad 
Axe river. Here they could find no boats, and only 
two canoes could be mustered for the whole band. Mak- 
ing a raft, it was loaded with women, children and old 
men, and launched for the opposite shore, but in mid- 
stream it was capsized and most of the occupants were 
drowned. In the midst of these futile efforts to escape, 
the army of General Henry appeared upon the scene an 
August 2. All the forces of the whites had been re- 
united and were engaged in the pursuit. On the day 
previous, as the Indians were trying to cross the river, 
a supply boat, the Warrior, engaged to carry supplies 
for the forces along the river, appeared, and Black 
Hawk asked that a boat be sent ashore to receive his 
people, as he wished to surrender. But instead of 
complying, the boat answered with discharges of grape 
and canister, mowing down the savages as they were 
huddled in groups on the shore. The discharge was 
answered by a fire of musketry, and for a few minutes 
the duel continued, when the boat steamed away, with 

153 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

one man wounded, but leaving over a score of Indians 
dead upon the shore. 

Little need be said of what followed after the white 
army of pursuit came upon the disheartened and starv- 
ing Indians upon the morning of the second of August. 
The massacre was begun and carried forward as rapidly 
as possible. The steamboat Warrior returned to add 
its fire to the attack of the land force and to prevent 
any from swimming across the river. In three hours 
it was all over. One hundred and fifty Indians were 
killed in the fight, fully as many were drowned in 
efforts to cross the river ; only fifty were taken prisoners. 
Black Hawk's band was annihilated, and few were the 
messengers left to carry the tale to the huts of the Sacs 
and Foxes in their new homes to the west of the 
Mississippi. Black Hawk succeeded in escaping with a 
few of his braves. He took refuge with his friends, 
the Winnebagoes. But he was too dangerous a guest 
to be kept in hiding, so the Winnebagoes gave him 
up to the United States forces and he was taken away 
to prison. He was taken to Fortress Monroe, and then 
to some of the principal cities of the East, to show 
him how hopeless' was the red man's struggle against 
the white invader; then he was returned to Fort Arm- 
strong, where he was turned over to Chief Keokuk, who 
became responsible for his future good behavior. He 
was held by the United States government to be guilty 
of nothing worthy of death, as he had conducted honor- 
able warfare in his struggle for life. 

Black Hawk died in Davis county, Iowa, on the third 
of October, 1838, supposed to have been seventy-one 
years of age. 

Thus lived, struggled, and perished one of the best 

154 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR 

specimens of Indian manhood that had come in contact 
with the white settlements. He saw the degradation of 
his race and read their certain doom in the approaching 
settlements of the whites. His proud spirit rebelled 
against the fate marked out for him and his people. 
Outraged in his sense of savage justice, he swore eternal 
hatred against the supplanters of his race, and in his 
poor savage way made blunders and committed crimes 
in no sense worse or more barbarous than were those 
committed against him and his by the paleface foe. 
Driven from his home, in the desperation of hunger 
and humiliation he dug up the hatchet, and ended as 
many another struggling for freedom has ended, by 
digging the graves of his people. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE MORMONS IN ILLINOIS 

About forty-five miles above Quincy, and nine miles 
below Fort Madison, the Mississippi makes a bend or 
elbow, forming a blunt promontory. This promontory 
slopes gradually upward from the river, which bounds 
it on three sides, thus forming one of the most beautiful, 
pleasing and advantageous sites for a town that can 
well be imagined. A gentleman by the name of Isaac 
Gallard had owned this tract of land and had made 
some improvements upon it for a country home. He 
decided to establish a trading station on the river, and 
for this purpose laid off town lots and named the place 
Commerce. The town did not grow rapidly, and up to 
1840 there were not more than about twenty houses. 

In the autumn of 1839 some strangers appeared at 
Commerce and purchased from the owners the town site 
and the adjoining lands. These men were the agents 
of the Mormon church, that had recently come into 
prominence. 

The founder of this church organization was Joseph 
Smith, a native of Vermont, but from early childhood 
resident with his parents near Palmyra, New York. 
It is not easy to sift the real truth from the mass of 
contradictory evidence produced by his detractors and 
his supporters. But, apparently, Joseph's parents were 

156 



THE MORMONS IN ILLINOIS 

poor, ignorant, superstitious and indolent. The morals 
of the family were not reputed to be of the best. Joseph 
received little schooling, but, in spite of all the claims 
by friend and foe, of his utter ignorance, we are satisfied 
from the work he did that he had a mind that was keen, 
shrewd and imaginative. He was bold, fearless and 
shameless throughout his whole career. 

About 1827, Joseph claimed to have found in a hill 
near Palmyra a set of golden plates upon which was 
written a history of an extinct people and a divine rev- 
elation. The writing was claimed to be in a late 
Egyptian character, and two stones were found with 
the plates, by looking through which Joseph was enabled 
to read and translate the writing. The Lord had told 
him where to dig for the plates and how to use them. 
With a few associates, who claimed to have seen the 
plates, he proceeded to translate the inscriptions and 
to publish the same as the Book of Mormon. The trans- 
lation was completed by the year 1830, and in April of 
that year he seems to have gathered about him all whom 
he had up to that time induced to join him, and 
organized them into a church. The Book of Mormon 
was supplemented from time to time by direct revela- 
tion to the Prophet Joseph, as he had need, concerning 
the most trivial as well as the most important affairs. 

It is marvelous that in this age and in such a com- 
munity a doctrine based upon credulity and lust could 
find a soil for growth and that it could so extend its 
influence that within twenty years it could claim six 
hundred thousand deluded followers, gathered from all 
parts of Europe and America. 

Joseph Smith moved to Kirtland, near Cleveland, 
Ohio. From this place they sent out missionaries to 

157 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

preach their gospel and make new converts and form 
new settlements. Joseph received a revelation that 
their Zion with its temple was to be in Missouri, and 
thither a number of them went, buying up a tract of 
land in Jackson county and selecting a temple site at 
what is now called Independence. The stranger there 
is still shown the "temple site" upon which many 
Mormons believe their final temple is to be builded 
when the triumphant saints shall be gathered to the 
Zion foretold by their Prophet Joseph. 

Joseph, with his brother Hyrum, the patriarch and 
high priest of the church, were forced to leave Kirtland 
wearing a coat of tar and feathers, because of business 
and social irregularities, and they joined the hosts 
gathered in Missouri. But their ways were not the ways 
of the land, and war, open and merciless, was waged by 
the people of Jackson and Clay counties against the 
newcomers. With mob violence, clash of arms, destruc- 
tion of property, and shedding of blood, the contest was 
carried on until at last the Mormons were forced to 
sell out their possessions for what they could get and 
leave the state. 

It was to provide for this migration that the advance 
agents of the church, looking for a location, had selected 
and bought the site at Commerce in the autumn of 1839. 
The name was changed to Nauvoo, meaning the blessed, 
and early in the spring of 1840, large delegations of 
Mormons began to arrive. Within four years the popu- 
lation of the town grew to over fifteen thousand souls. 

When the "saints" (the name they chose for them- 
selves) reached Nauvoo, their leader, Joseph Smith, and 
his brother were prisoners in Missouri. By some means 
they managed to elude their guards and, escaping from 

158 



THE MORMONS IN ILLINOIS 

the state, reached their haven at Nauvoo. Here every 
device known to craft and diplomacy was used to secure 
the Mormon population absolute freedom from arrest 
or gentile interference. The Democrats and Whigs were 
at that time struggling for political control of the state, 
and both desired the Mormon vote. It was easy, there- 
fore, for the city of Nauvoo to obtain almost anything 
desired in the way of special legislation. The session of 
the legislature of 1840-41 granted a sweeping charter 
which in some particulars placed the authority of the 
city government above that of the state legislature. It 
provided for the organization of the Nauvoo legion to 
act as a part of the state militia, with arms furnished by 
the state, and granted a charter for a university. 

Out of these plenary powers grew the difficulties that 
lead to the expulsion of the Mormons from the state, 
although it must needs have been that under any provi- 
sions whatever difficulties could not be avoided. The 
clannish spirit and theocratic organization of the saints 
made it impossible for them to live peaceably with their 
neighbors at any time or in any place. 

In 1844 came the beginning of the end of Mormon 
practice and prosperity in Illinois. Nauvoo at that time 
was a thriving city. Every known industry was being 
carried on and never was a people more industrious. 
New accessions of numbers with a considerable sprink- 
ling of wealth was constantly arriving from Europe and 
the eastern states. The well organized missionary enter- 
prises of the church gave abundant evidence of the 
wisdom with which they had been planned by the proph- 
et. But, like Babylon of old, in the height of its 
glory and promise, this new made city upon the hills 
overlooking the great river, was doomed to desolation 
11 159 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

and its inhabitants destined to drink to the very dregs 
the cup of want and suffering. 

The officials of Missouri made several efforts to get 
possession of the fugitives who had fled from justice in 
that state. But Joseph, the prophet, sometimes by force, 
sometimes by fraud and sometimes by the interference of 
the courts evaded extradition to the soil of Missouri. 
The Nauvoo legion, consisting of four thousand well 
drilled and equipped soldiers, all of the Mormon faith 
and pledged to do the will of the prophet, excited the 
fear and distrust of the surrounding people. Many rob- 
beries and murders had been committed on both sides of 
the river and incriminating evidence pointed towards 
Nauvoo. Retaliation was practiced upon the Mormons 
living in other parts of the country. Several thousands 
of them lived outside the limits of Nauvoo. About 1842 
the revelation concerning polygamy seems to have made 
its appearance among the leaders, and a knowledge of 
its practice was , gradually rumored about the country. 
Stories of dreadful immorality excited the gentile popu- 
lation and caused a disaffection in the ranks of the saints. 
Everything was ready for an explosion and only waited 
for an occasion. What was intended as a means for 
removing the tension proved to be the spark leading to 
the powder magazine. 

Governor Ford decided to visit Hancock county in 
person to investigate the complaints and endeavor to 
pour oil upon the troubled waters. Whether wisely or 
not, some of the militia of the adjoining counties was 
called out to guarantee peace and quiet. The prophet 
Joseph, hearing of this, at once declared Nauvoo under 
martial law and called out the Nauvoo legiop of four 
thousand militiamen. War was in the air and passion 

160 



THE MORMONS IN ILLINOIS 

was stirred to its tensest point on both sides. But the 
leaders seemed to realize the seriousness of the crisis and 
used great caution. Smith finally surrendered the arms 
of the state and agreed to surrender himself and his 
brother to the courts. In a few days they did this, going 
imguarded to Carthage, the county seat, and giving 
themselves up. They were placed in the Carthage jail 
to await a hearing. The militia, except a few men 
retained as guards, was disbanded, and the governor 
thought the storm was over. He assured the Mormons 
that they were safe in their persons and property, and 
himself proceeded to Nauvoo to investigate upon the 
ground some of the charges made. While the governor 
was absent in Nauvoo, upon the afternoon of June 24^ 
1844, a mob of fifty men made an attack upon the Car- 
thage jail, killed both Joseph and H3^rum Smith, and 
wounded one of the two Mormon elders who were at that 
time visiting with them in the jail. The excitement 
among the gentiles was intense. The mob scattered and 
fled. It was expected that the Mormon legion would at 
once sweep the county in vengeance. But the Mormons 
seemed stunned and made no attempt to retaliate. They 
proceeded sadly to Carthage for their dead, and, carry- 
ing them back to their city, gave them honorable burial. 
It could not be otherwise than that a state of war, 
bitter and merciless should be carried on from this time 
forth between the Mormons and their gentile neighbors. 
Which was most to blame cannot be well determined. 
Hundreds of houses went up in flames and many lives 
were sacrificed in open warfare or more dreaded assas- 
sination. The people in the surrounding counties were 
aroused and gave notice in most positive terms that the 
Mormons must cross the river and leave the state. So 

161 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

riotous were the disorders of the following year that the 
state militia was called out to preserve the peace, and 
finally the Mormons, seeing no alternative, agreed to 
leave the state if given a reasonable time in which to 
dispose of their property and make the needed prepara- 
tion. 

All the winter of 1845-6, every house in Nauvoo was a 
workshop. The temple, not yet complete, resounded 
with the sounds of hammers and saws. It is said that 
twelve thousand wagons were made during those months. 
Before spring, Brigham Young, who had been chosen 
head of the church in place of Joseph Smith, hearing 
that federal officers were on their trail for various 
offenses, decided to hasten their departure. On the fif- 
teenth of February, in the dead of winter, the vanguard 
of that migrating city, to the number of two thousand, 
set out, crossing the Mississippi on the ice. About the 
middle of May a second detachment followed. Those 
who still remained around their desolate homes, trying 
to sell what little remained at any price that would 
enable them to provide for the journey before them, were 
assaulted, mobbed and goaded to desperation by the sur- 
rounding gentile population. 

The people claimed to fear that the remnant of the 
Mormons did not intend to leave the place. This 
remnant was forced to gather together in haste what 
they could and flee for their lives to the Iowa side of the 
river. 

The pioneers of the vanguard reached Salt Lake in 
July, 1847, a year and a half after starting. The other 
detachments were scattered from the deserts of Utah to 
the Mississippi river, — a struggling, suffering mass, en- 
during heat and cold, thirst and hunger, disease and 

162 



THE MORMONS IN ILLINOIS 

nakedness, death, in all its terrible forms, marking their 
road across the western wilderness and mountains with 
the graves of their loved ones, in obedience to a faith 
the most degrading and servile in the history of this 
country. Perhaps never since the dark ages has there 
been such a remarkable migration of a nation in the face 
of difficulties as this movement of the Mormons to Salt 
Lake. It is a fascinating episode in the history of 
political and social institutions as well as in the history 
of religions, but, having seen the Mormons across the 
river, free from the state of Illinois, we must refer you 
to other sources for a study of their peculiar institutions 
and the sacrifices they were called upon to make for 
them. 



CHAPTER XYII 

THE ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL 

The one great problem which an advancing civiliza- 
tion must meet and solve is that of transportation. 
Without readiness of communication there can be little 
growth or development. The fringe of frontier settle- 
ments will remain stationary for years unless means of 
passing to and fro can be provided for those who live 
upon the outskirts or who wish to pass from the more 
thickly settled regions toward the frontier. We read 
that when Washington was inaugurated the means of 
transportation were so poor that the members of Con- 
gress could not reach New York in time for the cere- 
mony on the fourth of March and it had to be postponed 
until the thirtieth of April. The roads were swampy 
and for hundreds of miles the statesmen had to ride 
through forests and across mountains, swimming rivers 
and threading ravines for weeks in order to reach the 
seat of government. If the country was to develop it 
must be provided with better means of communication. 
The historian accounts for the great advance of the 
Greek people over other peoples of their times by point- 
ing to their indented shores and calling attention to the 
fact that no Greek lived more than forty miles from the 
sea. They became a commercial people, going and com- 
ing between all the ports of the Mediterranean. Com- 
munication was easy and Greek thought was accelerated 

164 



THE ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL 

and brightened by this constant activity between distant 
parts. 

About the time this country began to feel the need of 
some better means of communication, an English com- 
pany had devised the scheme of building canals, and one 
was opened in England about 1760. Our fathers pro- 
posed to adopt this scheme, especially as they figured 
out that a horse could draw upon a canal about thirty 
times as much as it could draw in a wagon upon a good 
road. Their ideas still clung to the Atlantic seaboard, 
and in those days the dominating idea was one of fear of 
war and foreign invasion. So it came about that the 
first thoughts of canal-building were confined to the 
making of a line of coast canals not far from the Atlantic, 
so that trade might be carried on in case of a block- 
ade or the coast might be defended by boats protected 
from the exposure and dangers of the ocean. This canal 
system was to reach from Boston Bay to Buzzard's Bay, 
then by way of the Long Island Sound to New York, 
then on by way of the inland rivers and bays to the 
Carolinas. The first and only part of this scheme ever 
really completed was the Dismal Swamp section in Vir- 
ginia, which was opened in 1794. 

The possibilities of canal transportation, however, were 
demonstrated, and the canal fever began to rise in the 
pulse of the nation. All sorts of projects, some wise and 
many unwise, took possession of the different settlements, 
all struggling for trade and means of communication. 

A, good passageway between the East and the West 
was absolutely necessary if the western lands were to be 
successfully cultivated. The Alleghanies stood as an 
insurmountable barrier to the canal projects. But it 
finally came to be realized that the Hudson river had cut 

165 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

the northern mountain ridge in twain and from the 
Atlantic to Troy there was navigation by boat. To the 
west of Troy, stretching way off to the lake, was a vast 
reach of comparatively level land. Why not join the 
river and the lakes? — ^then the way would be opened to 
the very heart of the great "West. It was a big undertak- 
ing, but a great man was in position to seize the oppor- 
tunity, and he did it. DeWitt Clinton, the governor of 
New York, fathered the project, and spared no sacrifice 
nor energy nor money until a cask of water had been 
carried by boat from Lake Erie to the harbor at New 
York and there poured into the ocean, with great cere- 
mony, celebrating the wedding of the inland lakes with 
the sea. This was a great day for New York, — for all 
this country, — and Governor Clinton was the hero of 
the continent. 

This successful inauguration of canal-building oc- 
curred in 1825. It gave a great impetus to similar 
enterprises all over the country. Ohio, Indiana and 
Michigan all took up the work and thousands of miles of 
canals were built, adding to the development of these 
states. Of course the demand for canals soon reached 
Illinois, then just beginning to see her great possibilities 
and to feel how sorely she was trammeled by lack 
of public highways. The one great monument to this 
sublime devotion to an industrial purpose still stand- 
ing , in doubtful honor, is the Illinois and Michigan 
canal. 

This canal was to connect Lake Michigan with the 
Mississippi river, beginning at Chicago and following the 
Des Plaines and Illinois rivers as far as La Salle, and 
there connecting with the Illinois, which was capable of 
completing the navigable connection with the Mississ- 

166 



THE ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL 

ippi. The canal itself is ninety-six miles long, six feet 
deep, and sixty feet wide at the water line. 

Before Illinois became a state, the attention of Con- 
gress had been called to the desirability of building such 
a canal in order to connect the Lakes and the Gulf, but 
nothing had been done. After the admission to the 
Union, the state took the matter up and years of discus- 
sion and effort were spent in trying to bring about 
the consummation of the scheme. In 1822, Congress 
granted a right of way for the building of the canal, and 
the state legislature appropriated money for survey and 
charts. It was estimated that the canal would cost 
about six hundred thousand dollars, a large sum for 
those days. But the young state shouldered the respon- 
sibility and went at the work with western enthusiasm. 
In 1827, Congress donated about two hundred and 
twenty-five thousand acres of land lying along the route 
of the canal, to aid in its construction. 

Actual work upon the digging began in 1836. With 
this beginning of canal-building commenced also the 
growth and importance of Chicago. The canal lands 
turned the village into a thriving real estate center. No 
one can tell the nervous energy, the disheartening 
rebuffs, the discouragements, the sacrifices of the brave 
and heroic frontiersmen from 1823, when the first board 
of commissioners was appointed, to 1836, when the work 
w^as actually begun. Thirteen years of waiting! And 
who could adequately tell the heart-breakings, the trials, 
the bitter disappointments that followed along with the 
history of that canal until water was finally turned into 
it in 1848 ? Twelve years more added to the thirteen, — 
a quarter of a century getting ninety-six miles of canal 
in operation ! Instead of costing six hundred thousand 

167 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

dollars, as estimated, it cost over six million dollars, — 
ten times the estimate. But it was a great investment. 
It was worth to the state all it cost. It at once began 
returning princely revenues to the state treasury, as 
well as adding to the increase of population by immigra- 
tion. Up to 1879 the canal had cost about six and a 
half million dollars and had returned, for lands and 
earnings, eight million nine hundred thousand dollars. 
Could it have been completed a decade sooner it would 
have added millions to the wealth of the state before the 
locomotive began hurrying across the prairies shrieking 
its ''haw, haw" at the slow-moving canal -boat. 

Two other canal projects should be glanced at in this 
connection. The Illinois and Mississippi canal, which is 
generally known in the state as the Hennepin canal, was 
projected to connect the upper Mississippi and the 
Illinois rivers. As far back as 1871 the preliminary 
surveys were made for this canal, and thereafter it 
became an important element in the politics of the 
western part of the state. Work was begun upon the 
building of the canal in 1892, and water was turned into 
it in 1907. Whether it will ever return an equivalent 
for the eight million or more dollars that have been 
expended in its construction is a question for the next 
few years to answer. 

The Chicago drainage canal is the most expensive of 
canal-building and engineering projects undertaken in 
this country. The immediate purpose of this canal was 
not to furnish transportation but to furnish an outlet 
for the sewage of the city of Chicago. The canal con- 
nects with the Chicago river within the city, and empties 
itself into the Des Plaines at or near Joliet. The total 
length is about forty miles. The work of digging this 

168 



THE ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL 

canal was begun in September, 1892, and water was 
turned into it on the second of January, 1900. The 
channel is about one hundred and fifty feet wide at the 
bottom — its width varies somewhat in different sections 
— and about twenty-two feet in depth. It is supposed 
to give free passage to three hundred thousand cubic 
feet of water per minute. The entire cost of the struc- 
ture has been approximately fifty million dollars. The 
funds for this astonishing enterprise, the greatest per- 
haps in all the world for caring for the sewage of a city, 
have been supplied by taxation upon what is known as 
the Chicago Sanitary District, authorized by the legisla- 
ture and lying wholly within Cook county. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE ADVENT OF THE RAILROADS 

In 1812, when war was raging along the frontier, and 
later, in 1814, when the awful massacre occurred at Fort 
Dearborn, there was no way to travel from one point to 
another except by wagon, horse, or on foot. Had there 
been railway communication with Fort Wayne there 
had been no occasion for the bronze monument now 
standing at the foot of Eighteenth street. In 1832, 
when the Black Hawk War was on, General Winfield 
Scott was ordered from Fortress Monroe on the Atlantic 
seaboard to the scene of action with a body of United 
States regulars. He was eighteen days making the 
journey. What with the slow methods of transportation 
and what with the delays caused by the outbreak of 
cholera among his troops he did not reach the seat of war 
until hostilities were all over, so he played no part in the 
conflict. How things have changed within these years 
covering scarcely the life of one generation ! Should 
an outbreak against law and order occur now at Cairo, 
within twenty-four hours ten thousand troopers could 
be in charge of that city, coming from Chicago, Freeport, 
Rockford, or from the garrison at Fort Sheridan. In- 
stead of sending messengers on foot or horseback across 
the country, the tidings would be flashed in a minute to 
the uttermost parts of the earth. 

The railroads brought a new kind of life into the 

170 



THE ADVENT OF THE RAILROADS 

world. Wherever they have gone, old things have 
passed away and all things have become new. It is 
sometimes doubted whether the new is any better than 
the old. Indeed, many are inclined to believe that the 
changes wrought have been for the worse and are able 
to produce very strong arguments for their side of the 
question; but, be that as it may, we know that the old 
order has passed away ; it has gone forever, and we must 
adapt ourselves to the ever-changing conditions of the 
present if we would not waste our lives in useless fault- 
findings. 

In the very year DeWitt Clinton opened the Erie 
canal, the first railroad was operated in the United 
States. And curious to state, it was used for the pur- 
pose of removing the dirt from the canal being dug 
between the Delaware and the Chesapeake. In 1831 a 
road began operations between Albany and Schenectady 
in New York. These were little more than tramways 
and might be used by horse power as well as by steam 
power. In 1829 the first road built for steam only was 
opened in South Carolina between Charleston and 
Columbia. "When the Illinois and Michigan canal proj- 
ect was under discussion it was proposed at one time 
to substitute a railroad for the canal, and the legislature 
gave its permission. But it was not done, and the first 
railroad actually to go into operation was in 1837, when 
a little road was built in St. Clair county for the purpose 
of shipping coal into St. Louis. This road used horse 
power instead of steam. 

From 1832 until 1840 a wave of enthusiasm for public 
improvements swept over the state of Illinois. The 
credit of the state was pledged to the building and 
equipping of roads to such an extent that it was brought 

171 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

to the verge of bankruptcy. Into the details of these 
troubles we cannot enter. It was a stormy time, and 
only by the greatest good fortune did the state escape 
financial ruin. 

As early as 1831, propositions for the building of a 
north and south line of road through the state were dis- 
cussed. A charter was finally granted, in 1836, to a com- 
pany to build the road. It was a great undertaking in 
those days. There were no rolling-mills in this country 
and all the rails had to be bought in England, costing 
about fifty dollars a ton. The work was new and cost 
more in every department than the estimators supposed. 
Several companies that undertook the work failed one 
after the other. Even the state attempted to build the 
road, but failed, as had the others. So the years from 
1836 to 1851 passed in failures and disappointment. 
The United States government gave to the state of 
Illinois, Mississippi and Alabama a large body of the 
public lands to aid them in building a railroad from 
the Lakes to the Gulf. The total grant of land 
amounted to about two and a half million acres. This 
grant gave a new impetus to the project of constructing 
the road, and a new company was formed. The state 
legislature of 1851 granted a charter to the company. 
Under the provisions of the charter the state provided 
that a certain part of the income of the road (seven 
per cent) should go to the state. This provision is 
incorporated in the constitution of 1870 and is one 
source of the income to the state. Since 1855 this rail- 
road company has paid into the treasury of the state 
over twenty-five million dollars. 

In May, 1853, the first section of this road was put 
into operation. This was a stretch of sixty-one miles 

172 



THE ADVENT OF THE RAILROADS 

from La Salle to Bloomington. In July, 1854, one 
hundred and twenty-eight miles of the branch from 
Chicago to Urbana were completed and cars were run- 
ning. Before the close of the year 1854 trains were run- 
ning from Freeport to Galena. This road has continued 
to grow and to extend its lines in every direction until 
its mileage runs up into the thousands. 

When the charter for the Illinois Central was given 
there was not a line of chartered road crossing its riglit 
of way any place from north to south. Yet this was 
not the first road to begin actual operations. The first 
road in the state upon which an engine was used as 
motive power was the Great Northern Cross Railroad, 
which was chartered to extend from Springfield to 
Quincy. It was completed between Jacksonville and 
Meredosia, a distance of twenty-five miles, and in 1842 
began operations with a locomotive engine. It was 
one of the state roads. It was a failure. After expend- 
ing over a million dollars upon it, the state sold it out 
at auction for about twenty thousand dollars. 

It would be useless as well as tiresome to try to enu- 
merate the lines of railroads now operating in the state. 
Let it suffice to say that there are over twenty thousand 
miles of trackage in the state, and this leads all the states 
in the Union with the exception of Pennsylvania and 
Texas. There is scarcely a hamlet in the state through 
which from two to twenty trains a day do not pass, 
carrying passengers, freight and mail. 

The railroad has been the harbinger of a higher type 
of civilization and the distributer of the varied products 
of our great country, bringing the oranges of California 
and Florida to our Illinois tables and carrying our corn, 
oats and potatoes to the markets of New York and to 

173 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

the shipping points of the Old World. We sometimes 
think that the railroads are tyrannical and oppressive 
and lawless, yet when we compare what they have done 
for us with what evils they inflict upon us, there are 
none who do not admit that we have received a great 
balance of profit. 



CHAPTER XIX 

STATE EDUCATIONAL, CHARITABLE AND PENAL INSTITUTIONS 

The enabling act of April, 1818, under which Illinois 
became a state, suggested that provision be made for a 
system of free schools and for a state university, and 
suggested that certain lands be donated for the establish- 
ment of a fund for this purpose (Sec. 6). This was the 
beginning, or rather the foundation, of our present 
public school system with all its accompaniments of 
state university, normal schools and other educational 
institutions. 

Under the suggestion of this act of Congress, and in 
obedience to the growth of an enlightened sentiment, 
schools have been established from time to time to meet 
the varied demands of the population. 

There are six state educational institutions open to 
students of the state free of tuition. These are the 
State University at Urbana, opened in 1868, with Dr. 
John M. Gregory as its president; the State Normal 
School at Normal, established in 1857; the Southern 
Illinois Normal, located at Carbondale in 1874; the 
Northern Illinois Normal, located at De Kalb in 1895; 
the Eastern Illinois Normal, located at Charleston in 
1895, and the Western Illinois Normal, located at 
Macomb in 1899. All these institutions are related to 
the district and township schools of the state. The 
ideal system consists of having the state university the 
12 175 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

head and capstone of the entire system, so that from 
the kindergarten room of the most rustic district in the 
state to the university graduation there may be steady 
and regular gradation. It is so provided that the line 
of march begun in the country or village or city district 
school may be continued under the flag and to the drum 
beat of state protection until all has been done for the 
youth of the state that can be done to prepare them for 
an honorable and efficient service in the active duties 
of life. 

Semi-Educational Institutions. 

All children of the state do not come to the schools 
strong in body and mind. Some are born defective in 
organs of sense and some defective in mental powers. 
Others there are who through misfortune or disease 
become dependent because of similar defects. Under 
the older civilizations such as these received little care 
from the state or from any one else. They were the 
outcasts of society and the festering sores in every com- 
munity life. Only in comparatively recent years has 
anything been done to really help these unfortunates or 
to give them any recognition as having a right to a 
place on the earth. In our times schools are built for 
those who can be taught, and asylums for those needing 
constant care and attention. Illinois has not been be- 
hind any other state in providing for this unfortunate 
class of her citizens. 

There are now seventeen institutions in the state 
under the direction of the state board of charities, in 
which about fourteen thousand people, young and old, 
are taken care of. The secretary of state gives the fol- 
lowing list of institutions and inmates for 1906 : 

176 



STATE INSTITUTIONS 

Six hospitals for the insane 8,541 

Asylum for Criminal Insane 198 

Institution for the Deaf 435 

Institution for the Blind 208 

Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children. '. 1,482 

Soldiers' Home 1,709 

Soldiers' Orphans' Home 310 

Soldiers' Widows' Home 73 

Eye and Ear Infirmary 186 

State Training School for Girls 314 

St. Charles Boys' Home 217 

Industrial Home for the Blind 74 



13,747 



The Penal and Reformatory Institutions. 

As early as 1827 the need of a state institution for 
the incarceration of criminals was recognized. An 
appropriation was made for the erection of a building 
for this purpose. It was located at Alton and at first 
contained only twenty-five cells. This was the state 
prison ulitil 1857, when an act was passed for the build- 
ing of a new and larger prison at Joliet. This new 
structure was opened in 1858, although it was not then 
completed, and indeed has been in almost constant course 
of extension ever since. In 1877 there were over nine- 
teen hundred prisoners at Joliet and the legislature pro- 
vided for a second penitentiary to be located at Chester, 
near the mouth of the Kaskaskia river, and only five 
miles distant from the old town of Kaskaskia, of which 
we have had so much to do in these stories. This prison 
was opened for the reception of prisoners in 1878, when 
a number w^ere transferred from the overcrowded 
quarters at Joliet. 

177 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

In addition to these prisons, there is the state reform 
school located at Pontiac. This school was established 
in 1867 and was intended to give a chance for educa- 
tion and reformation for young men for whom there 
seemed some hope of reforming and winning back to 
useful citizenship. The -age limit has been raised until 
now boys from ten to twenty-one years of age are sent 
there. There are at this time approximately eleven 
hundred inmates. 



CHAPTER XX 

SOME OP THE MEN WHO MADE THE STATE 

The greatness of a state may be read in the biographies 
of its citizens. If the average of the citizenship is high, 
no state can be insignificant. If it be low, the whole 
civic structure shows the effect. For this reason we 
have taken great pains and have gone to great expense 
to establish and foster a system of public schools wherein 
every boy and girl may imbibe the fundamental notions 
of good citizenship. Every boy and girl in the land 
should take pride in these institutions and should strive 
to make them somewhat better than they are. 

In this chapter we shall give brief notes upon the 
lives of some of the great men of the state. We shall 
not name a fourth part of those who are worthy of 
mention, nor shall we be able to give more than a few 
facts concerning the lives of those whom we do men- 
tion. 

George Rogers Clark wrested the Illinois country 
from the British by his heroic capture of the settlements 
at Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Vincennes. He was born in 
Albemarle county, Virginia, in November, 1752. He 
became a farmer and later took up the work of surveying. 
He fought in some of the Indian skirmishes along the 
Virginia and Ohio borders. The great act of his life 
was the organizing and leading of a force that invaded 
the Illinois country in 1778. After the close of the 

179 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Revolution he did some fighting against the Indians, but 
soon retired to Louisville, Kentucky, where he lived 
until his death, which occurred February 18, 1818, the 
very year that Illinois became a state, with Kaskaskia 
as its capital. 

Arthur St. Clair, first governor of the Northwest 
territory, of which Illinois formed a part (1789-1802), 
was born in Scotland, coming to this country as a young 
man of about twenty-three. He served under Washing- 
ton in the Revolutionary War. He made his home in 
Pennsylvania and represented that state in the Con- 
tinental Congress. In 1802 President Jefferson removed 
him from the governorship of the Northwest territory, 
after which he retired to private life. He died at 
Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in August, 1818, the same 
year that Illinois became a state. 

Shadrach Bond was the first territorial delegate of 
Illinois to the United States Congress (1812-1814). 
He was instrumental in securing a preemption law, the 
first in the 'United States. He was the first governor of 
Illinois, serving from 1818 to 1822. He died at Kas- 
kaskia in 1832. 

Nathaniel Pope was our territorial delegate in Con- 
gress when Illinois asked for the enabling act which 
made it possible for her to become a state. To Mr. 
Pope's farsighted statesmanship and skill in presenting 
his views before the congressional committee are we in- 
debted to the fact that the site of Chicago is in the state 
of Illinois and not in Wisconsin. Had Mr. Pope been 
blind to the occasion, we should have neither the Chicago 
river nor the shore of Lake Michigan within our bound- 
aries. The original description of our territory cut us 
off with a line running directly west from the southern 

180* 



MEN WHO MADE THE STATE 

extremity of Lake Michigan. Mr. Pope succeeded in 
getting the line established at forty-two degrees and 
thirty minutes of north latitude, where it was effectually 
maintained. When Illinois was made a state Mr. Pope 
was made United States judge of the district, which then 
included the whole of the state. He held this office until 
the time of his death in January, 1850. 

Edward Coles succeeded Bond as governor of Illinois. 
He was a Virginian, but removed to Illinois in 1819 
with all his belongings. Among these belongings were 
twenty-six slaves. When he reached Illinois he told the 
slaves that they were all free and gave to each head of 
a family one hundred sixty acres of land. In 1822 he 
was elected governor upon an anti-slavery ticket. He 
was very active and influential in the slavery struggle 
at that time before the people of the state. He gave his 
entire salary to the cause and had the satisfaction of 
knowing that the cause of slavery had been killed in the 
state. In 1833 he removed from Illinois to Philadelphia, 
where he died in 1868, having had the great pleasure of 
seeing slavery destroyed in the entire United States. 

Morris Birkbeck should be mentioned in connection 
with the slavery struggle of Illinois. He was the warm 
friend and aid of Governor Coles in the contest. Birk- 
beck was a well-to-do Englishman who came to this 
country in 1817. He came to Illinois and bought a large 
track of land in what is now Edwards county. He 
was followed by a large colony whom he had persuaded 
to come to America, and they founded the town of New 
Albion. He was an able and active writer and speaker, 
urging the great possibilities of Illinois and the impor- 
tance of prohibiting slavery within the state. Mr. Birk- ^ 
beck lost his life by accidental drowning in 1825. 

181 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

NiNiAN Edwards was governor of Illinois from 1826 
to 1830. He had come to Illinois from the state of 
Kentucky, where he had studied law and had succeeded 
so well that he was made chief justice of the court of 
appeals. In 1809, when Illinois became an independent 
territory^ President Madison appointed Edwards as the 
first territorial governor. He served until Illinois be- 
came a state. At the close of his term as governor in 
1830 he retired to his home at Belleville, where he died 
in 1833 from an attack of cholera. 

John Reynolds succeeded Edwards as governor of 
Illinois in 1830. He was a typical backwoods character, 
although said to have received some college training in 
Tennessee. He was governor of the state during the 
Black Hawk disturbances and led the state militia in 
person. He wrote a number of books, chiefly historical, 
the best known of which is ' ' My Life and Times. ' ' He 
died in 1865. 

Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the martyr to the cause of 
abolition, was a son of Maine. He came to the West in 
1827, settling in St. Louis. He was educated for the 
ministry in the Presbyterian church, but much of his 
time was given to journalism. In St. Louis he started 
the Ohserver, a religious weekly newspaper. His edito- 
rials upon the subject of slavery were displeasing to a 
large part of the community, and, under threats from 
the pro-slavery party, he decided to leave the state. He 
carried his press and printing outfit to Alton in Illinois. 
Before the press could be set up, even as it lay upon the 
wharf, it was attacked by a mob and partially destroyed ; 
the mob was said to have followed the editor from St. 
Louis. This was in July, 1836. The citizens of Alton 
deprecated this action and a subscription was raised to 

182 



MEN WHO MADE THE STATE 

purchase a new press. But there was to be no compro- 
mise. Press after press was destroyed until four were 
ruined. The life of Love joy was made almost unendur- 
able, but still he stood for what he claimed as his rights 
as an American citizen and refused to be coerced by the 
mobs that hounded him. 

When it became known that a fourth press had been 
ordered and was on its way to the city an indignation 
meeting was called by the pro-slavery citizens of Alton. 
At this meeting, held November 3, Lovejoy appeared and 
after listening to the speeches made against him de- 
livered the following manly and pathetic appeal: 

"Mr. Chairman, it is not true as has been charged 
upon me that I hold in contempt the feelings and senti- 
ments of this community in reference to the question 
which is now agitating it. But, sir, while I value the 
good opinion of my fellow citizens as highly as anyone, 
I may be permitted to say that I am governed by higher 
considerations than either the favor or the fear of man. 
I plant mj^self down upon my unquestionable right, and 
the question to be decided is whether I shall be protected 
in the enjoyments of these rights — that is the question, 
sir, whether my property shall be protected, whether I 
shall be suffered to go home to my family at night with- 
out being assailed, threatened with tar and feathers and 
assassination — whether my afflicted wife, whose life has 
been in jeopardy from continual alarm and excitement, 
shall night after night be driven from a sick bed into 
the garret to save herself from brick bats and violence 
of the mob. That, sir, is the question ! I know, sir that 
you can tar and feather me, hang me, or put me in the 
Mississippi without the least difficulty. But what then? 
Where shall I go? I have concluded, after consulting 

183 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

with my friends, and earnestly seeking counsel of God, 
to remain in Alton, and here insist on protection in the 
exercise of my rights. If the civil authorities refuse 
to protect me, I must look to God, and if I die, I am 
determined to make my grave in Alton." 

When after several days of intense excitement, the 
fourth press reached Alton on the morning of November 
7, 1837, a plot was at once entered into by his enemies 
to destroy this press also. It was removed to a ware- 
house, and here on the night of the seventh of November, 
as he. and some of his friends tried to defend his prop- 
erty from violence, he was shot dowij. by the mob and 
killed. It was a tragic episode, carried out through the 
more than two years during which Love joy stood for the 
rights of free speech as well as for the rights of man. 
His death had more to do with the growth of abolition 
sentiment in Illinois than any other one thing. He was 
regarded as a martyr, and as such his influence and senti- 
ments were felt far and near. For those who want an 
example of a brave man standing almost alone against 
great odds, simply for the sake of the right as he recog- 
nized it, when he might have found safety and ease else- 
where, our history furnishes few parallels to that of E. 
P. Love joy. 

Stephen Arnold Douglas was born in Vermont in 
1813 and came to Illinois in 1833. He studied law at 
Winchester, Illinois, and after service in several official 
positions became justice of the Supreme Court of the 
state in 1842. He was elected to Congress in 1842, 1844 
and 1846, serving two terms, when he was chosen to the 
United States Senate in 1846. He was reelected twice, 
the second time in 1859 after the famous debates with 
Abraham Lincoln. Douglas was looking forward to a 

184 



MEN WHO MADE THE STATE 

probable election to the office of president of the United 
States, but his debates with Lincoln, while for the time 
successful, seemed to effectually separate him from his 
democratic friends in the south. When the time came 
for nominating standard bearers for the democratic 
party, Douglas found himself in control of only a 
minority of the forces. The convention broke up into 
factions and instead of presenting a united front there 
were several candidates, against whom was opposed the 
railsplitter of the Sangamon, and Douglas was badly 
beaten. It was a severe blow to his pride and he prob- 
ably never recovered from it. Although opposed to 
Lincoln in the great battle for the presidency, there 
w^ere none who stood more loyally by the administration 
of the great president than did Stephen A. Douglas. 
He w^as a patriot as well as a party man, and not for 
a moment did he hesitate when the time came to give 
his voice and influence for the union cause. He died 
in Chicago, June 3, 1861, before the war had scarcely 
begun. 

In Woodland Park, Chicago, stands the Douglas monu- 
ment, by Leonard Yolk, consisting of a granite base, sur- 
mounted by a bronze figure of the distinguished senator, 
while at the four corners of the sarcophagus-like base 
are bronze allegorical figures representing Illinois, His- 
tory, Justice and Eloquence. The shaft is something 
over 100 feet in height and was erected by the state at 
a cost of $100,000. 

Abraham Lincoln, the ** First American" for whom 
Nature made a new mold, using clay out of the great 
West, was born in Hardin county, Kentucky, February 
12, 1809. In 1830, with his father he came to Illinois, 
settling in Macon county. While a boy and young 

185 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

man he spent his life as did most of the youth in this 
frontier country. Abe was more industrious and more 
far-seeing than most of his associates, and blessed with 
rugged health and great physical endurance, was pre- 
pared to follow the life of farmhand, flatboatman, rail- 
splitter, storekeeper or any other occupation that might 
offer. He had very little opportunity for schooling or 
self-education. What little he had was used wisely 
and persistently. He would walk miles to borrow books 
an*d would spend many of his sleeping hours in reading 
them. No one can read his speeches without being 
amazed not only with the extent of reading they exhibit, 
but the thoroughness with which he had digested the 
themes of the authors. For one who had so few oppor- 
tunities to get books this is remarkable. Lincoln was a 
soldier in the Black Hawk War, as were Jefferson Davis, 
Major Anderson of Fort Sumter fame, and many others 
who afterwards became noted leaders. Lincoln studied 
law in his odd hours and was admitted to the bar in 1836. 
He was a member of the state legislature for several years. 
He served upon the delegation that was charged with 
securing the location of the capitol building at Spring- 
field. He was a member of Congress from 1847 to 1849. 
In 1855 he was a candidate for election to the United 
States senate, but was beaten. In 1 857 he was one of the 
leading spirits in the formation of the republican party 
in the state of Illinois, the convention meeting at Bloom- 
ington. In 1858 he was nominated by his party for 
the United States senate. Out of this nomination grew 
the notable debates between ^ Lincoln and Douglas. 
Lincoln was beaten for the senate, but his reputation was 
made, and in 1860 he was nominated for the office of 
president of the United States and elected. The rest 

186 



MEN WHO MADE THE STATE 

of his public life is written in the history of the Civil 
War, which began with the beginning of his administra- 
tion and was about at its close when he was assassinated 
by John Wilkes Booth, a half-crazed actor, on the 
fifteenth of April, 1865. Lincoln was shot in Ford's 
theater on the evening of April 15, died the following 
morning, and, after a national funeral the like of which 
had never been known in this country, his body was laid 
to rest in the city where he had made his home, the 
capital of his state. 

At the corner of Lake and Market streets, on the 
building occupied by Reid, Murdoch & Co., a memorial 
tablet marks the site of the temporary wigwam in which 
Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency, 
May 18, 1860. The tablet was placed by the Chicago 
Centennial association at the celebration of Chicago's 
hundredth anniversary, which took place Sept. 26 to Oct. 
2, 1903. 

A month after the assassination of Lincoln an associa- 
tion was formed for the purpose of erecting a national 
monument. There was a hearty response to the appeal 
and ground was broken for the monument in September, 
1569, and it was dedicated in October, 1874. It stands 
upon an eminence in Oak Ridge cemetery, Springfield. 
The base is seventy-two and a half feet from east to 
west and one hundred nineteen and a half feet from 
north to south, rising by gradations to a height of 
twenty-eight feet and four inches from the ground. 
Surmounting this is an obelisk rising ninety-two feet 
higher. The total height from the ground to the top 
of the obelisk is one hundred twenty feet and four 
inches. In 1899, owing to signs of weakness in the 
monument, the legislature appropriated $100,000 for 

187 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

repairs and the entire structure was gone over and 
strengthened. 

At the suggestion of Robert T. Lincoln, the Board of 
Control had a cemented vault made beneath the floor of 
the catacomb, and in this vault the body of President 
Lincoln was placed Sept. 26, 1901. 

Joel Matteson was governor of Illinois from 1853 to 
1857. He was born in New York in 1808. After some 
experience in other parts of the country he came to 
Illinois in 1834, making his home at Joliet, in "Will 
county, where he engaged in manufacturing. Under 
the administration of Governor Matteson, and largely 
through his influence, the school law of 1855, the basis 
of our present law, was passed by the legislature. 
After the close of his term as governor, he removed to 
Chicago where he made his home until the time of his 
death, January 31, 1873. 

NiNiAN W. Edv^ards, a son of Governor Edwards, 
deserves a conspicuous place in the history of the state. 
When, upon the recommendation of Governor Matteson, 
the legislature provided for the enactment of a school 
law and for the establishing of the office of superintend- 
ent of schools, Ninian Edwards was the man selected for 
that office. So it fell into his hands, by virtue of that 
appointment and the act of the legislature, to draft a 
school law for the state. No one doubts the honesty of 
purpose and great devotion with which he set to work 
upon that 'task, and the law produced and enacted, stands 
to-day as the best monument to the ability and broad 
views of education possessed by its compiler. From the 
appointment of Ninian Edwards to the office of state 
superintendent may be said to date the beginning of 
free schools in the state of Illinois. Ninian Edwards 

188 



MEN WHO MADE THE STATE 

was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1809, and died at 
his home in Springfield, September 2, 1889. 

Richard Yates was the governor of Illinois in the 
Civil War times. It was a trying position, as a large 
element of the population, especially in the southern 
part of the state, was bitterly opposed to the war. The 
legislature was badly divided, and only by the most 
positive spirit of loyalty to Union principles was a 
serious division of sentiment prevented. Yates was 
known as one of the great war governors. He deserved 
all praise for the courage and straightforward manner 
in which he dealt with the questions of the war. Under 
the impetus and enthusiasm created by this fearless 
governor, Illinois came forward with nearly two hun- 
dred fifty thousand boys in blue, and their part in the 
war was one of honor to themselves and of glory to the 
state. 

Yates was born in Warsaw, Kentucky, in 1815. In 
1831 the family removed to Illinois, making their home 
at Springfield. He studied law, served in the state 
legislature and in Congress. He aided in the organiza- 
tion of the republican party in Illinois, and at the same 
time Lincoln was elected president, Yates was elected to 
the governorship of Illinois. After his term of office 
had expired he was elected to the United States senate, 
where he served from 1865 to 1871. He died in St. 
Louis, suddenly, while passing through the city on a 
business trip under the appointment of President Grant, 
November 27, 1873. 

U. S. Grant came to the state in middle life. He was 
thirty-eight years of age when he made his home in 
Galena. He was born at Point Pleasant, Clermont 
county, Ohio, April 27, 1822. He graduated from the 

189 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

West Point Academy and entered the army. He served 
in the Mexican War and afterward retiring from the 
army he settled at St. Louis, removing from there to 
Illinois in 1860. At the breaking out of the Civil War 
he at once offered his services to the government and 
was soon placed in charge of the Union forces at Cairo. 
From the day in February, 1862, when he led his troops 
against the enemy's camp at Belmont, until his death in 
the cottage at Mount McGregor, in July, 1885, his story 
is in large part the story of the Civil War and the recon- 
struction of the southern states after the close of the 
war. 

Space forbids that we should thus go on through th« 
whole list of those worthy a place upon the honorable 
escutcheon of the state, else would we tell of Logan, one 
of our great volunteer leaders; of Oglesby and Palmer, 
strong in statecraft and faithful to civic duty ; of Hovey 
and Bateman and Edwards and Hewitt and a great 
multitude of others who have made our educational sky 
glitter with stars as does the blue canopy at night. We 
should name Riggs and Walker and Cartwright and 
Peck and Finley, and thousands of their colaborers and 
successors, who made religious life a necessity and saved 
the pioneer settlements from paganism. We would go 
even further back than this and tell of the heroic souls 
who planted their cabins over against the hunting 
grounds of the savage, and, taking their lives in their 
hands, by sacrifice and self-denial, by sufferings oft 
beyond description, and with death often by violence, 
sometimes at the stake and sometimes with lingering 
illness far from medical aid or skillful nursing, made 
this land possible for our twentieth century civilization 
and comforts. It was such as these that laid the founda- 

190 



MEN WHO MADE THE STATE 

tions of the prosperity and greatness of our state, and 
of these we are in no sense worthy unless we shall add 
to the inheritance something from our own lives and 
industry that shall redound to the honor of our state. 



13 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

Beside the lake, covering and spreading all about the 
spot v/here Marquette spent the long wearisome winter 
of 1674-5, has grown up a great city giving homes to 
two millions of people. Instead of the frail canoes 
paddling along the shore or pushing up the rivers we 
have great ships made of steel and carrying thousands 
of tons of freight coming and going every day in the 
year. The war-whoop of the Indian no longer echoes 
across the sands of the lake shore and his wigwam no 
longer adds picturesqueness and solemnity to the scene. 
Instead of these we have the shrieking of thousands of 
steam whistles, the rumbling of unnumbered wheels 
along steel rails or over granite stones and the atmos- 
phere is laden with belching volumes of black and heavy 
smoke from countless factory and office chimneys. 

In digging for foundations in the city of London 
workmen have turned up implements 'and household 
utensils used by Englishmen five hundred years ago; 
still below that they have found the armor and spears 
and coins of the Norman French who came into the 
country with William the Conqueror nearly nine hun- 
dred years ago ; still below that they have discovered the 
stone foundations and shields and bridle-bits and coins 
left by the Romans who lived in the city eighteen 
hundred years ago; and yet beneath that have been 

192 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

found the simple tools and household articles of the 
ancient Britons who founded the city of London before 
Julius C^sar was born, perhaps, before the city of Rome 
was built upon her seven hills. 

The same might be said of many other cities where 
multitudes of men have gathered like hives of bees. 
We walk the streets of Boston and see the buildings 
in which Otis and Hancock and Adams thrilled their 
audiences by fiery denunciations of English oppressions ; 
we see the very church steeple which flashed the light 
that started Paul Revere on his midnight ride. The 
men who builded and lived and loved and died in these 
structures and walked these streets in sunlight by day 
and in darkness by night have become as historic and as 
distant as are the pyramids of Egypt. "With every great 
city we associate the notion of age, of time, of past 
generations. 

But here beside the lake has grown up a phenomenon 
in the history of cities. There are men among us who 
can remember when the waste of sands from Beverley 
hills to North Shore drive was broken by not more than 
a score of rude buildings. There are many among us 
who can remember when the total population could be 
written down in three figures, — and now it takes seven. 
For rapidity of growth, for solidity of structure, for its 
imperial command of trade and commerce it stands 
alone, unique and unchallenged among all the cities of 
the world. It is fitting that it should be so. It is the 
great city of the Illinois country and Illinois is our state. 

The biography of a city should be as interesting and 
instructive as the biography of a man and it will do us 
good to spend a little time trying to image, as best we 
can, the gradual development of this, our Chicago. 

193 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

There are many theories as to the origin of the name 
Chicago. The one that has been generally accepted 
is that it is an Indian word, signifying a bad smell. As 
applied to this region, it is supposed to have referred 
to the wild onions which grew rankly all over the marshy 
plain. By other authorities the name is said to have 
been derived from an Indian word meaning strong or 
mighty. The Indians are said to have applied the name 
to the Mississippi, to thunder and to the voice of the 
Great Manitou. Father Hennepin used the name to 
designate the Illinois river. La Salle gave the name to 
the Des Plaines and also to the Calumet. 

He speaks of the ''Chicagou Portage." The name 
came at last to designate both the plain and the river 
long before Fort Dearborn came to be built. 

After the successful campaign of General Anthony 
Wayne against the Indians of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan 
and Illinois in 1794-5, the different tribes were forced 
to cede parts of their lands to the United States. The 
Pottawattomies, who occupied the country bordering 
upon the lake in Illinois, gave up ''one piece of land, six 
miles square, at the mouth of the Chicago river emptying 
into Lake Michigan, where a fort formerly stood. ' ' This 
was practically the site of the present Chicago, and thus 
it was that the real estate trade for the ground upon 
which we have builded our city was conducted, and thus 
the title to our city lots was obtained from the Indians. 

In 1803, the secretary of war ordered a company of 
soldiers to move from Detroit to the mouth of the Chi- 
cago river and there establish and occupy a fort. The 
following year Fort Dearborn was completed and was 
occupied by two companies of soldiers. 

The story of the fort is briefly told upon a bronze 

194 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

tablet built into the walls of the Hoyt building at the 
foot of Michigan avenue in the following inscription: 

''This building occupies the site of old Fort Dearborn, 
which extended a little across Michigan avenue, and 
somewhat into the river as it now is. The fort was built 
in 1803-4, forming our utmost defense. By order of 
Gen. Hull, it was evacuated Aug. 15, 1812, after its 
stores and provisions had been distributed among the 
Indians. Very soon after, the Indians attacked and 
massacred about fifty of the troops and a number of 
citizens, including women and children, and next day 
burned the fort. In 1816 it was rebuilt, but after the 
Black Hawk War it went into gradual disuse, and in 
May, 1837, was abandoned by the army, but was 
occupied by various government offices till 1857, when it 
was taken down excepting a single building which stood 
upon this site till the great fire of Oct. 9, 1871. At the 
suggestion of the Chicago Historical society this tablet 
was erected by W. M. Hoyt, November, 1880." 

Around this fort gathered a few fur traders with their 
families. John Kinzie, the first permanent white settler, 
came in 1804. With him came his wife, his nephew, 
Robert Forsythe, his nine year old stepdaughter Mar- 
garet McKillup, and the little John Kinzie, who was 
conveyed in a birch-bark cradle swung from the 
shoulders of "Black Jim," a negro slave. In 1805 came 
Charles Jouett; then there were the families of Charles 
Lee, Mr. Burns and Mr. White. This was the popula- 
tion of Chicago in 1806. In 1804, Ellen Marion Kinzie 
was born, — the fir.st white child born in Chicago. 

The stories of fun and frolic, of joy and laughter, of 
births and deaths which come down to us from those 
days of pioneer life, in the midst of swamps and sands 

195 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

beside our beautiful lake, seem like fairy lore of far off 
lands. Yet they were the lives and loves of those who 
might have talked with our fathers, giving them from 
experience the tales of Indian life and bloody massa- 
cres. 

The fort was rebuilt in 1816, as told on our tablet, and 
settlers again gathered about it, gradually increasing 
in number. 

James Galloway arrived overland from Ohio in 1824. 
The story of his journey was a nine days' wonder. At 
Sandusky he had put a gun, tomahawk, steel traps, blan- 
kets, bacon and corn meal in a wagon. He shot game to 
eat on the way, and sold the peltries in Fort Wayne. 
From there he crossed Indiana and Michigan to St. 
Joseph, and followed the Indian trail around the end of 
the lake. He toiled through the sand dunes where 
Michigan City now stands, and got stuck in the mud of 
the Calumet marsh. He went on nearly 100 miles west 
of Chicago to the grand rapids of the Illinois river and, 
on the site of Marseilles, staked out a claim in the 
military road strip. 

The next year he went back to Ohio for his family, 
bringing them around by the Great Lakes. 

It was recognized that Chicago was the natural 
transfer point between the Great Lakes and the Missis- 
sippi valley. President Monroe was deluged with 
petitions, even so early as that, asking for the opening 
of roads and canals to connect these great waterways. 

The southern part of the state was settled more 
rapidly than the northern part, as ■ has been shown 
by the maps of a preceding chapter. It was not until 
1823 that this region came under the civil rule of the 
state as a district ''attached to Fulton County." The 

196 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

first election was held that year in the Indian agency 
house. That same year the entire property of Chicago 
was' assessed at $2,50. 

In 1830, Chicago really began to take on signs of life 
and growth. The Illinois and Michigan canal had been 
chartered and large tracts of land had been donated by 
the government to aid in the construction. Chicago was 
described at that time as ^'a village of fifteen houses and 
a fort, located on Section 9, Township 39, Range 14." 
This was the terminus of the canal, and town lots were 
laid off and offered for sale. Then business began. 
Lots sold as high as $75 each. 

In 1831 Cook County was organized. In 1832 the 
taxes of Chicago amounted to $150 and the village 
trustees erected the first public building, a cattle yard 
for stray cattle, at a cost of twelve dollars. 

The Black Hawk War and the cholera came like a frost 
upon the budding prosperity of the young city. But it 
soon recovered and in 1833 the population had grown to 
fifty families. In 1905 four of the pioneer settlers who 
came to Chicago in 1833-4 met at a reunion. How 
strange it must have seemed to them to look out upon 
the miles and miles of brick and stone buildings and 
reflect that when they came here to settle there were 
only fifty houses! Before the close of 1834 the popula- 
tion had grown to about 2,000. The real estate boom 
was making the town. 

The chief part of the lots auctioned off that year be- 
longed to the school section. Number 16, which is in the 
heart of Chicago. Most of these lots sold for about 
$6.72 per acre, bringing a total of about $38,000 to the 
school fund. Fortunately for us who now live in 
Chicago most of the lots were sold on time and many of 

197 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

them were not paid for and came back to the school 
board. 

There was a regular craze for lots. Prices rose so 
rapidly that no one could keep track of them. The lot 
upon which the Northwestern University building is 
now located, at Lake and Dearborn streets, was sold in 
1829 by raffle at twenty-five cents a chance. In 1830 it 
was traded for an Indian pony. In 1831 it was rated 
as worth $1.25. In 1832 it was traded for a pair of 
boots. In 1833 it was traded for a barrel of whisky, 
worth $25. In 1834 it was traded for a yoke of steers 
and a barrel of flour. In 1835 it was sold for $500 cash. 
In 1836 it was sold for $5,000 and the purchaser refused 
to part with it. 

In 1836 Harriet Martineau visited Chicago and wrote 
as follows of it : 

''I never saw a busier place. It was but a squalid 
town of insignificant houses that sat jauntily in the 
muck of the prairie, but the streets were as crowded as 
London. Land sales were held on every block, and 
everybody hurried from one to another, fearing to miss 
the bargains. A negro dressed in scarlet, bearing a red 
flag and riding a white horse with scarlet housings, 
dashed through the town and announced the times of 
sale. Crowds flocked around him. The gentlemen of 
our party were hailed from the shop doors with offers of 
farms, land lots, water lots, town sites, timber claims. 
The immediate occasion of excitement was the sale of 
$2,000,000 worth of lots along the projected canal. 
Wild land along that undug ditch was selling for more 
than the finest land in the valley of the Mohawk, ' where 
an inestimable amount of traffic was then being carried 
on. These speculators in Chicago were not sharpers 

198 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

or gamblers, but hard-headed business men. It was 
remarkable to find such an assemblage of cultivated, 
refined and wealthy people living in the rudest houses 
on the edge of that wild prairie. ' ' 

In March, 1837, the city was given a charter and 
W. B. Ogden was elected to be the first mayor. The 
population that year was given as 4,149. 

The Indians had departed. They had signed away 
their title to the lands and agreed to go to the west of 
the Mississippi. In 1835 they held their last war dance 
and built their last council-fire in Chicago. Judge 
J. D. Caton, who at the time was a young lawyer in 
the village, wrote the following account of this last 
scene : 

"It was in August, 1835, that the Pottawattomies 
danced their last war dance in Chicago. Certain risks 
were taken in permitting them to dance, but the officer 
in command at the fort feared also to refuse them. 
The garrison was under arms on the parade ground at 
Michigan avenue and the river, ostensibly to do the 
braves honor, but in reality to be in readiness for 
trouble should sorrow, excitement and bad whisky prove 
too much for the Indian's self-control. 

' ^ The braves assembled at the bark council house after 
hours in their tepees spent in making their savage 
toilets. All were naked except for a strip of cloth about 
the loins, but their bodies were covered with elaborate 
designs in brilliant paints. Foreheads, cheeks and noses 
were lined with curved stripes of vermilion edged with 
black points, that gave a diabolical expression to their 
faces. The long, coarse, black hair was gathered into 
scalp-locks and decorated with colored hawk and eagle 
feathers extending down the back to the ground. The 

199 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

braves were armed with war clubs and tomahawks and 
were led by musicians who kept up a hideous, rhythmic 
din by beating on hollow vessels with sticks. 

''They advanced, not by marching, but by a continu- 
ous dance. Proceeding westward along the north bank 
of the river they crossed the eighty-foot slough at Market 
street and the North Branch, on swaying foot bridges, 
thence along the west bank to Lake street, where a log 
bridge spanned the South Branch. They were now just 
below the windows of the Sauganash house, which stood 
on the southeast corner of Lake and IMarket, where 
the Republican wigwam was afterwards built and where 
Lincoln was nominated for the presidency twenty-five 
years later. 

''The dance, which never stopped, consisted of jerks, 
leaps and unnatural distortions, all performed with 
lightning-like swiftness, and wildcat grace and ferocity. 
There were 800 braves in that raging river of dusky, 
painted fiends which poured over the bridge and flowed 
' down Lake street to the fort. They were frothing at 
the mouth ; many had been wounded by flying tomahawks 
and war clubs, and blood mingled with dust, paint and 
sweat, but the victims were unconscious of their hurts. 
Ladies at the windows fainted as the savages closed 
around the hotel to perform extra exploits. What if 
this sham rage should turn into a real attack! How 
easy it would have been for these Indians to have com- 
mitted another massacre in the helpless town!" 

But no serious results followed. The next day the 
savages sadly turned away from the Chicago plain and 
began their march to their new home in the far away 
Missouri country. 

• The time of city building had now come and the newly 

200 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

elected officers in 1837 began taking an inventory of 
affairs and proposing plans for the improvement of 
local conditions. 

To provide for the troops of children that were al- 
ready filling the streets, a school system was established. 
The state legislature granted power to the city council 
to establish and maintain common schools and this, be- 
ginning in 1837, has grown until the present city council 
makes provisions for about 290,000 children in its build- 
ings and passes appropriations for the payment of 
nearly 6,000 teachers. 

The Civil War affected Chicago as it affected all the 
cities of the north. From her homes went out thousands 
of brave men, many of whom never came back. The 
mothers and wives and sisters of the city formed relief 
bands and sewing societies, gathering supplies of medi- 
cines, bandages, and clothing for our boys at the front. 
All this is told in the history books and we do not need 
to repeat it here. 

But it is well for us, as children of Illinois, to be re- 
minded that when the great President, Abraham Lincoln, 
a citizen of our state, called for volunteers on the fif- 
teenth of April, 1861,, in less than two weeks 10,000 men 
had offered their services although only 6,000 had been 
asked. It was on April 19th that Governor Yates issued 
his proclamation asking for troops and on the morning 
of the 21st six hundred men with four pieces of artillery 
left Chicago in response to the call. 

It was a general from our state, U. S. Grant, that 
won the first great victory for the union forces, at Fort 
Donelson, and it was he who finally at the head of the 
Nation 's army brought the war to a close at Appomattox. 
To the armies of the North, Illinois sent about 260,000 

201 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

men of whom about 35,000 were either killed or died 
during the war. When the war was over, when our 
great commander, General Grant, had urged," Let us 
have peace, ' ' and the dauntless leader of the gray, Gen- 
eral Robert E. Lee, had disbanded and sent to their 
homes the shattered ranks of the Confederacy, men 
everywhere rejoiced and Chicago began a new era of 
growth and development. 

In the midst of the growing prosperity of the city 
there came the greatest calamity that can befall any 
populous community. In a few hours the streets which 
had been filled with trade and traffic were strewn with 
ruins and debris ; the miles of stores and office buildings 
which were the pride of all the citizens were smoldering 
heaps of ashes. A great fire, borne upon the wings of 
the wind, swept the city from near Twelfth and Clinton 
streets to Fullerton avenue, taking everything between 
the rivers and the lake. It began upon the night of 
October 8, 1871, it is said, by the overturning of a lamp 
in a cow-shed. It was Sunday evening and the city was 
unprepared for the emergency. All night long, all day 
long, and yet another night and a day the red flames 
shot up so high they were visible to a distance of one 
hundred fifty miles and the stifling smoke drove the 
panic stricken and homeless people from one refuge to 
another. 

The Are department was assisted by the fire depart- 
ments from other cities, some of them coming from as 
far away as the city of Cleveland, Ohio, but all could 
do nothing against the destroying demon of flame. It 
burned itself out, then as if satisfied, died away and 
disappeared. Behind were left two thousand acres of 
desolate, smoking ruins and more than seventy thousand 

202 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

people whose homes had gone up in the fire and smoke. 

It was a terrific blow coming with the suddenness of 
assassination and the city by the lake staggered under 
the blow. Nearly $200,000,000 of her gathered wealth, 
about a third of all the estimated wealth of the city, had 
disappeared, and her business had been wiped out. But, 
rousing from the catastrophe, she put forth new 
strength, as one rousing from a sleep, and with the aid 
of all the world that laid its contributions at her door 
in a noble spirit of philanthropy, upon a scale never 
known before, she began building larger and better 
than ever before. 

No one who walks to-day from the Rock Island depot to 
Lincoln Park, through the region of large buildings 
towering to the height of fourteen, twenty and even 
thirty stories, would dream that here for the distance of 
four miles the fire had left not a building standing and 
foundations had to be laid anew for every structure. 
It is a magnificent monument to the endurance and 
persistence of man and a fine illustration of that Chicago 
spirit which says '^I will.'' 

One of the first and most serious problems that con- 
fronted the new city council in 1837 was the providing 
for a wholesome and sufficient supply of fresh water. 
Perhaps a short sketch of the inauguration and develop- 
ment of the water system of the city may be interesting 
in this place. 

The Chicago Water System. 

This system was begun in 1834, when the village 
board paid $95.50 for digging a well for the use of the 
public. This well was sunk at what is now the corner 

203 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

of Cass and Michigan streets. The supply from the 
well was not as good as from the lake. Water was 
hauled by wagon or barrel and sold from house to 
house or each one provided his own means of trans- 
portation. In 1836 the state legislature incorporated 
the Chicago Hydraulic Company for the purpose of 
supplying to the people a wholesome and plentiful 
supply of fresh water. 

This Hydraulic company began furnishing water to 
the city in 1840, It built a tank 25 by 25 by 8 feet at 
the corner of Lake and Michigan streets. The top of the 
tank was about eighty feet above the level of the lake. 
A twenty-five horse power engine was installed and the 
tank was connected with the lake by a pipe which ex- 
tended one hundred fifty feet from the shore. About 
two miles of wooden pipe was laid for distribution. 
This did not supply more than about one-fifth of the 
people. Most of the town was still served by the water 
wagon. The population was increasing very rapidly 
and the need of an adequate supply began to be severely 
felt. In 1852 the city took over the franchises of the 
Hydraulic company and laid plans for a better system 
of water works, but it was not until 1854 that the new 
system was put into operation. 

By the plan of 1854 a pumping station was erected 
at Chicago avenue (the present pumping location), and 
a pipe thirty inches in diameter was extended a short 
distance from the shore. Three stand-pipes were 
erected, one at La Salle and Adams streets, one at 
Morgan and Monroe and the third at Chicago avenue 
and Sedgwick street. These stand-pipes were connected 
with the pumping station by iron pipes. The first iron 
pipes for distribution purposes were laid in 1852; the 

204 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

population at that time was about 30,000. These three 
reservoirs were in use, in whole or in part, until 1876. 
In 1858 two new reservoirs were built, holding about 
half a million gallons each. 

At the close of 1862 there were one hundred five 
miles of iron water pipe in use. The population was 
then about 115,000. 




Chicago Avenue Pumping Station. 



In 1863 the legislature gave permission, and Congress 
approved it, to build tunnels, or to use such other 
means as might be necessary, for obtaining water from 
the lake. Under this permission the first tunnel under 
the lake was begun, in March, 1864, and completed in 
just three years. A crib was erected two miles from the 
shore northeast from the Chicago avenue pumping 

205 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

station and a tunnel, five feet in diameter, connected 
these two points. The iron distributing pipe had grown 
by this time to one hundred seventy-five miles. 

In 1872 a second tunnel was run from the two-mile 
crib, forty-six feet south of the first tunnel and parallel 
with it, to the shore connecting with the Chicago avenue 




Lake View Crib. 



station and thence extending to Twenty-second street 
and Ashland avenue. The distance is 31,419 feet and 
the tunnel is seven feet in diameter. This tunnel was 
completed in 1874, making a connection in all with 
four hundred sixteen miles of iron service pipe for a 
population of over 300,000 people. 

From 1876 to 1880 brick tunnels were built under 
the river at various points and thirty-six inch mains 

206 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

run through them to connect the various stations. In 
1886-7 a third tunnel was built extending from the 
Chicago avenue station to the breakwater where a crib 
was erected for the purpose of relieving the two-mile 
crib when endangered by ice. This tunnel has not been 
used much because it is too near the shore. 

A fourth tunnel and a third crib were built in 1888- 
92. It reaches out four miles into the lake to the east 
of Twelfth street ; it is from six to eight feet in diameter 
and extends under the lake to the distance of 34,339 feet, 
connecting with the Park Row pumping station. From 
this station two land tunnels extend, one, seven feet in 
diameter, running to Peck court, thence northwest to 
Des Plaines street, thence to Harrison street pumping 
station. A second runs to the Fourteenth street pump- 
ing station. Various other short connecting tunnels 
were built. 

In 1889, by annexation, Hyde Park and the town of 
Lake became a part of the city with their water system. 
This consisted of a. tunnel reaching about a mile out 
into the lake to a crib, and a pumping station at Sixty- 
eighth street. The city extended this lake tunnel to 
the distance of two miles and erected a new crib and 
extended the land tunnels so that most of the city south 
of Thirty-ninth street is supplied through this Sixty- 
eighth street crib. At the same time Lake View became 
a part of the city with an unfinished tunnel on hand. 
This tunnel was completed by the city extending to a 
distance of two miles from the shore and a new crib 
was erected. 

Other annexations brought the towns of Washington 
Heights, Norwood Park, Rogers Park and Cicero into 
the city. The last two are still supplied by a system 
14 207 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

operated by a private corporation. Washington Heights 
is supplied by a pumping station which draws its water 
from an artesian well, 1,350 feet deep. Norwood Park 
is also supplied from a well 1,600 feet deep. 

In 1896-99 a still greater supply of water was de- 
manded and a new tunnel and crib were built. This 
is known as the Carter Harrison crib. The lake tunnel 
reaching this crib starts at Oak street shaft and extends 
14,033 feet from the shore. It is ten feet in diameter. 
From the shaft one land tunnel, ten feet in diameter 
extends to Green and Grand avenue, 8,666 feet. From 
here one branch runs to Central Park avenue and Fill- 
more street, a distance of 19,856 feet; a second branch 
runs to Springfield avenue and Bloomingdale road, 22- 
184 feet. The last sections of these tunnels were com- 
pleted in 1900. 

Besides these various tunnels connecting with the 
lake cribs there are seventeen tunnels under the rivers. 
In 1904 there were nineteen hundred seventy-eight miles 
of water mains and thirty-seven miles of lake tunnels, 
with five cribs and ten pumping stations. The entire 
system is estimated to have cost the city about $36,000,- 
000. 

The end is not yet. As we write these pages scores of 
men are at work, night and day, extending the tunnels 
both under land and water trying to solve more com- 
pletely the same problem that faced our fathers in 1837. 

The Chicago Sewerage System. 

When a tolerable supply of water was furnished, only 
one side of the problem had been attacked. Another 
and in some ways a much more serious question con- 

208 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

cerned the disposal of the waste matter, — the slops and 
garbage, — the sewage of the city. We shall be inter- 
ested then in the manner in which this problem was 
attacked and has been pushed forward toward its final 
solution. 

No systematic efforts were made to care for the sewage 
of Chicago until 1855. We remember that the city took 
over the franchises of the Hydraulic Water company in 
1852 and began furnishing water under the new city 
system in 1854. Up to this time the sewage had been 
disposed of in the primitive fashion of dumping it out 
into the street, into gutters or the rivers, or into cess- 
pools or wherever and by whatever means it might be 
put out of the way. Some effort had been made in the 
business parts of the city to place wooden box-pipes 
under ground for the purpose of conveying the sewage 
to the river, but it was a very inadequate system and 
very limited in its application. But with the coming 
of a large population and with the advent of a modern- 
ized water system there became apparent a need for a 
better system of taking care of the waste. The epi- 
demics of cholera and fevers that swept the city of a 
large part of its population at various times as well as 
the frightfully high death rate made some plan impera- 
tive. 

In February, 1855, the legislature, at the request of 
citizens of Chicago, created a board of sewerage com- 
missioners. This board went to work at once, but much 
time was needed for investigation and surveying and 
study. Mr. Chesbrough, an engineer from Boston, was 
employed as the official engineer. In our later develop- 
ments of the sewerage and drainage system we are 
carrying out the suggestions and recommendations of 

209 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Mr. Chesbrough. IJe was counted the leading sanitary 
engineer in the United States. It has been worth mil- 
lions of dollars to Chicago to have had such a man at 
the head of her sewer system in its beginnings. The 
plan adopted was to fill the streets in many parts of the 
city, raising the houses to street grade, in order that 
sewers might be built and covered. In many places 
even then the sewers were exposed above ground for many 
blocks. Sewers, about five feet in diameter, were to be 
built of brick, in most cases on every other street, lead- 
ing from the main streets to the river. Into these large 
sewers smaller ones, made of tile, were to lead from 
side streets, houses, etc. It was the plan that all the 
sewers should empty into the rivers. Until the extensive 
annexations began there were not more than about four 
sewers in all the city that emptied into the lake. 

It was not long until it began to be apparent to Mr. 
Chesbrough that trouble was in store for the city be- 
cause of the extreme pollution of the rivers. From the 
very first he had recommended as the only adequate and 
lasting system of sewerage the cutting of a canal 
through the divide to the Des Plaines river. But the 
expense involved made this an impossible proposition. 
A plan for cleansing the river was then recommended. 
It was proposed to erect pumping stations and build 
conduits from the lake to the branches of the rivers 
and by pumping great quantities of fresh water into the 
rivers to force the sewage out into the lake, thus cleans- 
ing the rivers. This plan was put into operation on the 
North Side and was kept up until very recent years. 
It helped to cleanse the river, but, of course, it carried 
the pollution out into the lake. In 1848 the Illinois 
and Michigan canal was completed. It was only a 

210 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

shallow ditch, four feet of water, but it reached from 
Bridgeport to the Illinois river at La Salle. The build- 
ers of the canal had great difficulty to get sufficient water 
to fill the canal and keep it full. To assist in this, 
pumps were erected at Bridgeport and water was 
pumped out of the river for the canal. This was a 
decided advantage for the city, but it was only a partial 
relief, as the amount pumped was at no time sufficient 
to keep the river clear and many months of the year the 
pumps were not working at all because the canal was 
not in use. In 1862 the effect of the sewage upon the 
drinking water began to be generally noticed and it 
became a matter of great importance to find a remedy. 
You remember that it was at this time that the first 
tunnel was considered. The first tunnel under the lake 
was completed in 1867, the second in 1872. The city 
also joined with the state in an effort to deepen the 
Illinois and Michigan canal, hoping that some relief 
might be found in that quarter. The canal was dug 
deeper at an expense of nearly $3,000,000 and larger 
pumps were installed at Bridgeport and they were kept 
pumping all the time for the relief of the river. In 
spite of all, the river was rank and smelled to heaven. 

In this connection it is worth noting that from a very 
early day a great effort was made to get the national 
government to build a ship canal from the lake to the 
Mississippi deep enough to permit war vessels to come 
from the gulf to the lake. Chicago was intensely in- 
terested in this scheme. But those of us who have read 
the history of the political parties and factions of the 
times know how bitterly the subject of internal im- 
provements was fought. Upon this ground over and 
over again the bill for a ship canal was beaten. As 

211 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

early as 1847 a great national convention was held in 
Chicago to consider the matter of national aid to canals. 
Chicago at that time had a population of only about 
16,000 people, yet she accommodated a convention of 
20,000 and made holiday for them with processions and 
skyrockets and receptions. It was a great gathering. 
Nineteen states had delegates at this convention. 
Among these delegates were such men as Horace Greeley, 
Thurlow Weed, Thomas Corwin, Schuyler Colfax and 
Abraham Lincoln. But it was of no avail; Congress 
turned a deaf ear to all such internal improvements. 

From 1855 until 1862 about 55 miles of sewers had 
been laid. From that time the growth has been steady 
and large, providing now more than 1,700 miles, of 
which more than six hundred miles are of brick. Owing 
to the lay of the land it is impossible to construct sewers 
for any great distance and have the water carried for- 
ward by gravity. The necessary fall soon sinks the 
sewer too deep in the ground for operation. To over- 
come this, pumping stations have been erected at con- 
venient places and the sewage has been lifted from one 
level to another and then carried forward again. 

The drainage channel connecting Lake Michigan with 
the Des Plaines river was made for the immediate pur- 
pose of providing for the disposal of the Chicago sewage. 
It is hoped that at some future time it may be one section 
of a great ship waterway from the lakes to the gulf. 
This channel was authorized by the legislature in 1889 
and the Sanitary District was organized with a total 
area of one hundred eighty-five square miles. The 
board of nine trustees are elected by the people of the 
district and are given power to levy taxes upon the 
district to meet the expenses of construction. 

212 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

Work was commenced in September, 1892, and the 
water from the lake was turned into the canal on the 
second of January, 1900, when, for the first time since 
the closing of the great ice age, the waters of the lakes 
found their way to the gulf. The cost of the canal, 
which is one of the most notable engineering feats in 
the history of this continent, has been about $50,000,000. 
It cuts through the divide of solid limestone and drift 
that formed the ancient barrier between the lake and 
the Des Plaines valley. Across this divide Marquette 
and La Salle and the wandering fur traders carried 
their canoes, writing down in their diaries that a canal 
should be cut connecting the Chicago and the Des 
Plaines river. The ideals that one man sees dimly in 
visions others coming after must make real as ever, thus, 

. . . ' ' Through the ages one increasing purpose runs. 
And the thoughts of men are widened by the process 
of the suns." 

Chicago is working away as rapidly as possible to 
complete a system of intercepting sewers which shall 
eventually carry all the sewage of this great city out to- 
ward the Mississippi, being purified and made harmless 
by the millions of gallons of pure water flowing through 
the lake. 

Industrial Life In Chicago. 

When one thinks of the many things to be done before 
he can live comfortably, — his home to be built and fur- 
nished, his clothes to be made, his food to be bought, 
streets to be paved for teaming, street car lines built so 
he may travel long distances in a short time, — and then 

213 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

considers that there are 2,000,000 people like him in 
the city needing all these things he can begin to under- 
stand what a wonderful hive of industry a great city 
must be. A great book, larger than our international 



CHICAGO 

and Vicinity 




CHICAGO EMBLEM 



BaRMAY_& CO., N.y. 



dictionary, would be needed to write just a little about 
each thing. 

A glance at a map of Chicago shows that it has 
about twenty miles of lake front and that the Chicago 
river, emptying into the lake, has two branches separa- 
ting something like the arms of the letter Y dividing the 

214 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

city into the North side, West side and South side. 
These are the official divisions. With a large map we 
can see that in the section near the mouth of the river 
the largest buildings are gathered and here the greater 
part of the buying and selling is done. It is claimed 
that upon the square mile bounded by Michigan avenue, 
the river, Halsted street and Harrison street more 
business is transacted than upon any other square mile 
of the earth. This square mile was once owned by the 
Chicago schools. 

Most of the people must live away from this center 
and we find their homes reaching out into the country 
miles and miles away. The warehouses and shops and 
factories with their smoke and noise and bustle have 
followed the river seeking room and places where fewer 
people congregate. This all means that street cars must 
be provided to take people from place to place. With- 
in the city limits there are about 1,600 miles of street 
car tracks ; if stretched out in one line they would reach 
from Chicago to Salt Lake City. An army of employes 
is kept constantly at work operating these cars. Be- 
sides this there are steam railway lines coming from all 
parts of the country bringing their passengers and 
freight to Chicago. About forty great railway lines 
have their headquarters in the city. These lines repre- 
sent nearly 100,000 miles of road which bring their 
tribute to the city by the lake and carry its products to 
the uttermost parts of the land. Many of these lines 
run suburban trains from the center of the city to the 
small towns thus enabling people to live miles from the 
places where they work. A study of the transportation 
lines within the city could furnish interesting material 
for a year of school life. 

215 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

Near the south end of the city, from 104th to 115th 
streets, is the section called Pullman. This was laid 
out by Mr. George M. Pullman the first inventor and 
manufacturer of the Pullman sleeping car. It is said 
that his first sleeper was run on the train that carried 
the body of President Lincoln to Springfield in 1865. 
The industry has grown to immense proportions. There 
is scarcely a railway station in the United States now 
through which does not pass daily one or more of the 
Pullman cars. This is one of the most interesting places 
to visit. One can here see how the rough wood and iron 
that come in on freight cars go out as luxuriant sleepers 
and drawing-rooms. Every kind of choice and valuable 
wood that can be found in any part of the world is 
used in the finishing and decorating of these cars. It 
is estimated that the value of the Pullman cars now in 
operation is about $200,000,000. 

In South Chicago, from 80th street to 106th street, 
we find a wonderful collection of industries. Here the 
Calumet river empties into the lake affording a harbor 
scarcely second, in convenience and in the amount of 
shipping done, to Chicago river. A few blocks up the 
river is a ship yard where some of the largest steel 
boats on the lakes are made. Frequently children from 
the schools are taken there by their teachers to see the 
great steel boats, four or five hundred feet long, 
launched. It is well worth the time and trouble. 

Iron mills and brick yards and grain elevators occupy 
the entire river fronts. Just below the mouth of the 
river on the lake is situated the Illinois Steel Works. 
This is one of the largest industries in the country. 
Millions of tons of ore come into these mills to go out in 
the form of steel rails or girders or rods or in other 

216 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 



shapes ready for the builder's use. As we pass by these 
mills covering blocks of ground, seeing the cinders, soot 
and smoke with which they fill the air we can imagine 
how the people live who spend their days within these 
walls. Visitors are shown through any part of these 
works where it is safe to go. These Illinois works are 
only the largest of some 30 similar institutions within 












•'gH^Kffi^ ® ^g^iSBK 



ifc^^TO- .:„-■ 



A general view of the Illinois Steel Works at South Chicago. 



the city whose combined product is valued at $90,000,- 
000 a year. 

If we pass now over to Halsted and 47th streets we 
shall come to the Stock Yards. This plant covers about 
a square mile between Halsted and Ashland avenue 
and between 39th and 47th streets. Here thousands of 
cattle, sheep and hogs are brought every day and from 
these plants train loads of meat and lard and by prod- 
ucts are sent away to find use in every city and every 
country on the globe. The annual product from this 

217 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

square mile of territory foots up to nearly $300,000,000. 
One can get on the elevated train and make a trip over 
the yards seeing all that can be seen outside the build- 
ings. This is as much as most of us want to see. 

If we go a short distance to the north and west of the 
Stock Yards we enter the lumber district where lumber 
covering acres of ground, is piled as high as houses 
waiting to be sold and sent away. Every kind of lumber 
work and lumber working machinery can be found in 
this district and one could spend a month wandering 
through it visiting the different yards and shops. The 
lumber products of the city amount to about $25,000,000 
a year. 

Still further to the west a short distance we come to 
the central plant of the International Harvester Com- 
pany. This again is an industry that would alone re- 
quire a small volume to describe. In every country on 
earth where men raise grain the harvester has found its 
way and is being used. No manufacturing industry in 
the city is more worth visiting than this. If requested 
in advance the managers will send a descriptive circular 
describing the various kinds of work to be seen in the 
shops. 

Standing beside all the rivers and along the railroads 
are dozens of high buildings, with few windows and 
apparently with nothing doing about them. But they 
are immense store houses of grain. These are the eleva- 
tors and into them is carried millions of bushels of 
wheat and oats and corn that have come from far away 
Kansas and Montana and Idaho and Oklahoma and 
many other states, waiting for orders which shall send 
it out along the railway lines and lake steamers to be 
distributed to all parts of the world. Something like 

218 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

$150,000,000 worth of grain is handled in the city every 
year. 

Thus we might go on for page after page telling of 
the candy factories, cheese and butter industries, brew- 
eries, printing and publishing interests, piano factories 




Through the mannfactuiing district of Chicago. The 
picture shows the bascule bridge at 12th Street open 
to allow a lake steamer to pass. 

in which Chicago is taking the lead, and scores of other 
manufacturing plants any one of which is full of in- 
terest and well worth a visit. The daily papers and 
annual almanacs will give us much information of this 
sort and the managers are always helpful and generous 
in answering questions and furnishing detailed informa- 
tion. 

The Public Buildings. 

These should not be neglected in any survey of the 
city. Perhaps the Government Building occupying the 

219 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

whole block bounded by Adams, Clark, Jackson and 
Dearborn streets is the most imposing. Here is housed 
the central postoffiee and here the government officials 
located in the city find offices. The building was ex- 
pected to be large enough to accommodate all demands 
upon it for twenty years to come. But although it has 
been in use but three or four years complaints are 
already being made that it has been outgrown. There 
are about 150 sub-stations in the city and from 
these mail carriers deliver the mail to the houses and 
offices. 

The New Cook County Court House together with the 
City Hall occupies another entire block bounded by 
Randolph, La Salle, * Washington and Clark streets. 
These two buildings, united as one, are supposed to rep- 
resent the best and most ornate piece of public ar- 
chitecture in the city. Be that as it may it is a fine group 
of buildings of which any city might well be proud. 

At the corner of Randolph and Michigan avenue ' is 
located the City Library. This is a fine structure and 
within it are housed about 300,000 volumes. Any citizen 
may draw books from the library and more than 10,000 
volumes are taken out every day. Reading rooms for 
the public are kept open and hundreds of men, wdmen 
and children patronize these rooms. 

On the lake front at the head of Adams street is 
located the Art Institute. This building, costing nearly 
a million of dollars, was opened to the public in 1893. 
It has constantly on exhibition collections of paint- 
ings, sculpture and articles of interest gathered from 
all parts of the world. Lessons in painting, draw- 
ing, modeling and in any other department of art work 
are given throughout the year. Teachers and school 

220 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

children are especially welcome and provision is made 
for their visits at all times free of charge. 

The University of Chicago, located on the Midway 
near Jackson Park, is becoming one of the great edu- 
cational institutions of the world. Its growth has been 
a matter of pride to the city. Through the generosity 
of Mr. John D. Rockefeller the early expenses of the 
school were met and a splendid endowment has been 
provided. The college campus now covers ninety-five 
acres of ground and the group of buildings numbers 
thirty-one with many more to follow. Something over 
$30,000,000 have been contributed to the University and 
about 3,500 students compose its ^annual roster. 

The Park System. 

Few cities are better supplied with opportunities for 
outdoor recreation than Chicago and yet the plans for 
the future propose more than doubling the present 
park area. Two thousand acres of ground are now 
covered by the public parks besides the miles of boule- 
vards which are a part of the general system. One 
can start in Jackson Park in an automobile or car- 
riage and make a complete circuit of the city without 
leaving the boulevards or parks, a drive of about fifty 
miles. The parks are well supplied with statuary and 
monuments. Lincoln Park on the North side has a 
fine zoological collection which is visited by thousands 
of school children, while the Field Museum in Jackson 
Park, on the South side, is the mecca of other thousands. 

The last few years the authorities have been providing 
a series of Municipal Playgrounds, chiefly for the use 
of children. These are being scattered over different 

221 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

parts of the city, and are open all day long with at- 
tendants and officers provided by the city to care for 
the grounds and the crowds that frequent them. The 
Field Houses for the indoor gatherings and lectures 
and entertainments provided in most of the small parks 
and which are open for the free use of the public are 
among the most notable improvements in the general 
park system. 

There is hardly a school in the city now which is not 
within reach of one or more of these parks or public 
playgrounds. It is opening up a new outlet for the 
excess of energy and restless life of the young and is 
providing a means for more out door sports and a 
greater number of hours for breathing the pure air. 
It is a good sanitary investment if all other considera- 
tions were forgotten. 

City Government In Chicago. 

With the growth in area and population the govern- 
ment of the city has become much more complex and 
difficult. We have a great city now with more varied 
interests and more departments of government than are 
to be found in many national governments. The char- 
ter of Chicago must be sought in the various enactments 
of the legislature as there is no special charter drawn up 
and adopted for the city. Efforts are being made to 
have that done at the present time but there are so many 
conflicting interests that there seems little chance for 
success. 

The following outline suggests the different depart- 
ments of the city government. The annual reports and 
the messages of the mayor, many of which may be had 

222 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

for the asking and all of which may be consulted in the 
public library, must be relied upon for fuller informa- 
tion as to the specific duty and the amount of work 
accomplished in each department. This outline does not 
name nearly all the officers of the city, as there are a 
multitude of officers and employes under each depart- 
ment. At the present time there are about 17,000 
persons employed in the business of the city, the payroll 
amounting to about $17,000,000. This is a great army 
of workmen and a great amount of money to be collected 
each year from the people of the city. 

Officers elected by the people. 
Mayor, — term four years. 
City council, 70 members. 

(Two from each ward elected in alternate years.) 
City Clerk. 
City Attorney. 
City Treasurer. 

Appointed by the Mayor, with approval of council. 
Comptroller, — Head of the Finance Department. 
Commissioner of Public Works, — Head of Department. 

(Has charge of streets, water, sewerage, etc.) 
Commissioner of Buildings, — Head of Department. 

(Issues permits for all buildings and inspects changes.) 
Corporation Counsel, — Head of Law Department. 
Commissioner of Health, — Head of Health Department. 
Superintendent of Police, — Head of Police Department. 
Fire Marshal, — Head of Fire Department. 
Board of Education (21 members) — Education Department. 

(Only a quasi-city department, as the public school system 

is a state institution, and as such is only partly given over 

to the city administration.) 

The Mayor also appoints, from time to time, as authorized by 
ordinance, many special officers whose duties do not come strictly 
under any of the departments named above. Some of these are 
15 223 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

the Inspectors of Oils, Meats, Weights and Measures, Fish, Gas 
Meters, Steam Boilers; seven Pound Masters, two Market Mas- 
ters, Civil Service Commission (three members). Special Park 
Commission (15 members are appointed by the Mayor and 12 
members are added by other provisions, making 27 in all). 

In 1906 a change was made in the police court 
administration of the city. All the Justices of the Peace 
were set aside and in their stead Municipal courts were 
established. There are twelve of these courts, each pre- 
sided over by a Judge elected by the people. This has 
proven a great advantage over the former system. 

The Elevated Roads. 

When the World's Pair was located at Chicago it 
was seen that the transportation facilities were not suffi- 
cient to accommodate the people who would come to 
the city. The railroad and street car lines at once 
made provision for extending their service. But the 
innovation introduced was the South Side L, reaching 
from the business part of the city to the Pair Grounds. 
This roadway is elevated upon steel supports so as to 
be far above the traffic of the streets carried on below. 
It did splendid service with its little dummy locomotives 
for years, when finally the steam power was changed 
for electric power. Since the inauguration of the 
Sotith Side L, other companies have been formed and 
similar roads have been constructed reaching to the 
extreme west and north sides of the city. 

The Chicago Subway. 

Not only overhead, but underground as well, have 
lines of transportation been sought to relieve the 

224 



THE MAKING OF CHICAGO 

crowded condition of the streets. Some five or six 
years ago permission was given to the Illinois Tele- 
phone Company to construct tunnels or subways under 
the streets of the city through which telephone, tele- 
graph and service pipes might be carried and also to 
serve as a means of transporting freight. Up to the 
present time there have been completed and put into 
operation over forty miles of this underground railroad. 
It has entrances leading from nearly every large busi- 
ness block in the heart of the city and daily thousands 
of tons of freight are moved to and fro under ground 
all unknown by the pedestrians above. These tunnels 
are from nine to fourteen feet in diameter and the 
cars and motors are made to correspond with these di- 
mensions. 

We have wandered far away from the auction grounds, 
where lots were being sold at $6.72 per acre, but at no 
time have we gone beyond the city and its growth. Of 
course with the growth in numbers must have come 
growth in territory. There have been fifteen different 
extensions of territory since the first city charter was 
received in 1837. Some of these have been made by city 
ordinance and some by votes of the people both of the 
city and territory to be annexed. The area has grown 
until the city is now twenty-six miles from north to 
south and about nine miles from east to west, covering 
a total area of one hundred ninety miles. Within this 
area dwell and work side by side the rich and the poor, 
the young and old, the learned and the unlearned. 
Here, crowded close together, yet scarcely seeing each 
other, are prodigality upon one hand and nakedness 
upon the other; those who turn with weariness from 

225 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

loaded tables and those whose pinched faces and emaci- 
ated limbs tell the story of hunger and want and expo- 
sure. Here are the joyous and gay so full of laughter 
that they cannot see the sad and decrepit who try to 
creep away to hide their misery in dark corners. Over 
against the great array of churches and charitable insti- 
tutions scattering their sunshine and inspiring hope, 
hang the great clouds of crime covering the abodes of 
meanness and hatred and sin. 

^^Yet it is a great city bearing upon its forefront the 
invincible motto, *'I will." There is no undertaking 
too vast for its consideration, no worthy enterprise 
which it will not dare attempt. The great waves of 
prosperity that have come upon it have seemed to create 
within it a spirit of selfishness and heartlessness. But 
this is after all only apparent. Let any great demand 
stir its depths and no city in all the world will respond 
more gloriously to the call of duty and sacrifice than our 
own Chicago, 




Chicago's 
Escutcheon. 



CHAPTER XXII 

STARVED ROCK 

Perhaps no other spot in Illinois suggests so much of 
pathos and tragedy as does the solitary cliff rising 
almost perpendicularly from the waters of the Illinois 
river nearly opposite Utica and known to all as Starved 
Eock. 

Prom the source to the mouth of the river this is the 
most noticeable break in the regularity of the scenery. 
An abrupt cliff rises directly from the water to the 
height of one hundred thirty-six feet. So direct is the 
wall of this rocky eminence that one standing on its top 
may let a bucket down with a rope and draw water up 
from the river below, as the writer has done when 
camping upon its summit. The top of the rock is fairly 
level and forms an area some six or seven hundred feet 
in circumference. In the olden time it was inaccessible 
except on the side away from the river and only on this 
side by a narrow, broken, tortuous path along which 
but one person could advance at a time. A deep gorge, 
about two hundred feet wide, at the bottom of which 
flows a little stream, separates it from a companion cliff 
to the east, known as "Lover's Leap." Cedar trees 
cover the cliff, or in former times did cover it, with quite 
a dense growth and all down the sides, even to the edge 
of the water, these hardy companions of the rocks found 
places for planting their roots. 

227 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

The last forty years have wrought many changes 
upon the scenery of this locality. Instead of the wild 
woods and narrow pathways we now have a summer 
hotel and broad roadways and all the conveniences of 
summer resorters. Could the shades of the Kaskaskia 
Indians come forth from the soil of the great meadows 
where Marquette preached to them, they would little 
dream that they were in the presence of their Rock. 

We recall how La Salle made observations upon this 
rock as he passed up the river on his way to Canada 
and how he sent word back to Tonti to fortify the 
place. And we remember how Tonti came to the village 
by the rock, and how the Iroquois came and what awful 
slaughter they made, and how Tonti, fleeing for his life, 
became lost to La Salle for more than a year. Then we 
know how in 1682, after the Mississippi had been fol- 
lowed to the Gulf, Tonti and La Salle at last carried 
out the plan of establishing a fort upon this rock, 
planting palisades all about its top and finally protecting 
it with iron cannon. One of these old cannons is still 
preserved (in the museum at Ottawa, we think) with 
many other relics of those early days. 

It was from this place, named by La Salle Fort St. 
Louis, that the great explorer set out for France, going 
by way of the lakes and the St. Lawrence. He never 
came back to his fort and here for years Tonti waited, 
holding the fort and giving protection to the great 
village of Indians that had gathered about this place 
of safety. Then in 1700, Tonti, wearied with waiting, 
moved to the south with the Indians and the old fort 
with its palisades was allowed to fall into decay, being 
only occasionally used thereafter by traders and passing 
companies of soldiers. 

228 



STARVED ROCK 

Could we know all the history that was lived and 
endured from the time Joliet and Marquette first saw the 
rock until the time Tonti abandoned it, we would doubt- 
less have stories of blood and carnage and heart aches 
and discouragements and despair and of heroic fortitude 
amid it all. 

In 1769, almost a hundred years after Marquette had 
preached in its shadow, the Rock was to witness its last 
great horror of blood and desolation. Upon this rock 
a nation was blotted out, only one man escaping to tell 
the story of how his people had perished. 

There is no history of these events; the people 
interested in them did not write histories. The tradi- 
tions handed down from father to son, from chief to 
chief, do not agree in many particulars and therefore 
the story is told with various settings, but all presenting 
the same essential facts. 

We recall that when the treaty of 1763 had been 
signed and all the Illinois country had been given to 
the English by the vanquished French, Pontiac, an 
Indian chief, stood in the way and for two years pre- 
vented the occupation of the valley by the English. 
After the final defeat of Pontiac he attended a council 
at Oswego, New York, signed the treaty of peace, then 
returned to his tribe, the Ottawas, in his Michigan 
home. He soon persuaded most of his tribe to move 
further south, settling in the Illinois country near the 
present site of Kankakee, where his band formed an 
alliance with the Pottawattomies. 

Here the traditions become discordant; some claiming 
that he took refuge among the Kaskaskia Indians near 
Cahokia and was there assassinated and others claiming 
that he did not go to Cahokia but was assassinated at 

229 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 



another place. The second tradition seems the more 
natural and reasonable and this we shall follow.* 

The Illinois Indians claimed all the country to the 
west of the Illinois river. In the summer time the green- 
head flies were very bad on the east and south side of the 
river, driving the buffalo to the west and north for 
pasturage. Pontiac's band followed them on the hunt. 
The Illinois Indians objected to this and warned the 
Ottawas that they were trespassing. No attention was 
paid to the warning and when the Illinois found that the 
Pottawattomies were allied with the Ottawas they did 
not care to begin warfare. A party of Ottawa Indians 
with Pontiac had been killing buffalo not far to the 
Northwest of the present city of Ottawa when their 

* It is claimed by many and perliaps with equal authority, that after 
the failure of all his plans in the East Pontiac returned to the West 
and about 1768 made his appearance at Cahokia. He was addicted 
to drink and when under the influence of liquor was quarrelsome. It 
is claimed that he spent his time between the two villages, St. Louis 
and Cahokia. At St, Louis the French Commandant, St. Ange, was 
his friend and protector. It is claimed that in the year 1769 after 
engaging in a drinking carousal at Cahokia he was stabbed by a Kas- 
kaskia Indian, of the Illinois tribe, and that the war of extermination 
followed. It is claimed that St. Ange removed the body to St. Louis 
and there gave it military burial as became the memory and remains 
of a great warrior. Any one visiting the present city of St. Louis may 
walk into the magnificent Southern Hotel and there in the corridor 
may find a profile bust of an Indian Chief with the following inscrip- 
tion: — 



Near this spot was buried 




by his friend, Governor St. Ange, 




PONTIAC, 




the Great Chief of the Ottawas, 




Killed at Cahokia, 111., 




April, 1769. 




This memorial was erected 




by 




the St. Louis Chapter of the 




Daughters of the American Revolution 




in the yenr 1900. 


• • • 4 



230 



STARVED ROCK 

camp was surprised by a body of Illinois warriors and 
many of the hunters were slain, Pontiac, badly wounded, 
escaping on a fleet-footed pony. 

A war followed this massacre with uncertain results, 
when finally a council was called to decide upon a 
treaty of peace. It is said that this council met upon 
the mound on the Des Plaines river, near the site of 
the present city of Joliet. (The mound which the Rock 
Island Railroad is using for ballast.) In this council 
the Ottawas claimed a part of the lands to the west of 
the river. This claim the Illinois Indians refused to 
consider even as the price of peace, but declared that 
they would shed the last drop of their blood before they 
would accept such conditions. The old chief Pontiac 
rose to speak and in a heated harangue urged his fol- 
lowers to insist upon a division of the territory and not 
to bury the hatchet until peace was made on these terms. 
The chief of the Illinois, Kineboo, enraged by the speech, 
drew his scalping knife and plunged it into the breast of 
Pontiac. Then came a war which could only end by the 
destruction of one side or the other. 

The Ottawas, the Kickapoos, the Pottawattomies, the 
Miamis and other tribes united to exterminate the 
Illinois. All down the river the scalping knife was 
used wherever an Illinois Indian could be found. At 
the village opposite the Rock the Illinois Indians col- 
lected their people and their supplies, and threw up a 
rude fortification of trees and earth and awaited the 
attack. 

The summer passed away and it seemed that the 
enemy had given up the pursuit, but suddenly, in the 
midst of a celebration, it is said in honor of the 
marriage of the chief's daughter, the war-whoop was 

231 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

sounded and the plains were filled with the warriors 
of the allied tribes. The invaders were repulsed in the 
attack that followed and retired for consultation. While 
the invaders were consulting, the Illinois were feast- 
ing and dancing in celebrating their victory. On the 
morrow, before the village was awake, the yelling Ot- 
tawas and Pottawattomies were upon them and breaking 
through the enclosure fought hand to hand among the 
wigwams. All day long the battle raged and when 
darkness came hundreds of braves lay among the scores 
of squaws and papooses who had fallen in the struggle. 
With the darkness came rain and the Ottawas again 
withdrew to consult for the morrow. 

In a book published in 1882 by Mr. N. Matson, The 
Pioneers of Illinois, the conclusion of this story is told 
in most graphic language almost literally, as follows : 

During the rain storm and in the darkness of the 
night, the Illinois launched their canoes across the river 
and ascended the Rock. Here were collected all the 
members of the tribe, consisting of about twelve hundred 
people, three hundred of whom were warriors. On the 
summit of the rock the fugitives felt secure from their 
enemies and sang songs of praise to the ''Great Mani- 
tou" for their deliverance. 

Morning came and with it a clear sky and a bright 
sun. From their elevated position they looked down 
upon their enemies encamped upon the meadows below. 
The allied forces moved upon the town to complete their 
work of destruction, but soon discovered that their 
intended victims had fled. The wounded, the sick and 
the aged who had been left behind, were slain and the 
village was fired and then the advance was begun for 
the refuge of the Illinois. 

232 



STARVED ROCK 

The rock was surrounded and with deafening yells 
the warriors crowded up the steep, rocky pathway to be 
met on the summit by the war clubs and tomahawks of 
the desperate Illinois. Again and again the dead bodies 
of the assailants were hurled over the precipice to splash 
in the waters below amid the canoes of their friends. 
Again and again the assailants rushed forward in the 
vain attempt to gain the summit. The struggle con- 
tinued until the pathway ran red with blood, the yells 
of the combatants drowning the shrieks and 'groans of 
the dying. 

When night came the allied forces, upon an eminence 
just to the south of the rock gathered trees and erected 
a sort of a breastwork from which they might fire upon 
the besieged enemy. The next day they poured deadly 
volleys into the crowded camp of the Illinois, killing 
and wounding many, among whom was the old chief, 
Kineboo, Trees were cut down and piled up as a pro- 
tection from this deadly fire and by this means they 
soon succeeded in warding off the arrows and rifle balls 
of the enemy. 

War is not fought with missiles alone. When they 
were the most secure the Illinois waked up to the 
fact that they were in the greatest danger and that 
certain death was staring them in the face. When they 
fled to the rock they had taken but scanty provision in 
the way of food and water. Their small store was 
exhausted and hunger began to be felt. Without a 
murmur they faced their fate. Day §fter day passed 
with no hope of escape. Famishing with thirst they cut 
up their buckskin clothing and attempted to draw up 
water from the stream below. But anticipating this, 
the enemy had placed guards along the river bank and 

233 - 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

the ropes were cut or the drawers were suddenly jerked 
over the precipice to the river. 

They sat upon the rock and gazed upon the meadow 
below, their meadow, upon which they had often roamed 
at pleasure, and longed for freedom once more. The 
site of their town was in plain view, but instead of 
lodges and camping tents with people passing to and fro 
it was only a dismal waste, blackened by fire and haunted 
by screaming flocks of buzzards. At night they looked 
upon the silent stars and listened to the moans and 
cries of their suffering friends; when morning came it 
was but another day of agony being ushered in. From 
their rocky prison they could see the ripe corn waving 
in their meadows ; on the distant plains they could see 
the herds of buffalo quietly feeding; at the base of the 
rock they could hear the waters of the river lapping 
against the sandstone cliff, but no hand was near to 
bring them a mouthful of food or a sip of water. 

Twelve days passed away during which many of the 
braves attempted to escape by climbing down the prec- 
ipice in the darkness of the night only to meet the 
merciless tomahawk of the guard stationed below. 
Others singing their death songs hurled their toma- 
hawks at the fiends and then crept away to die. Hunger 
and thirst had done their work when a party of the 
allied tribes climbed the rock and tomahawked all who 
had survived, scalping men, women and children alike, 
and here their bones were left to lie in the sun and 
rain until the elements had gathered them again into 
natures' great laboratory. 

Near the close of the siege a young warrior, during 
a severe rain storm in the night, took a buckskin cord 
and fastening it to the trunk of a cedar let himself 

234 



STAKVED ROCK 

down over the cliff and thus chanced to make his escape. 
He was the only survivor of this fearful tragedy. 
He was partly white, being of French descent, on his 
father's side, who had lived at Fort St. Louis many 
years before. Being alone in the world without friends 
or kindred he went to Peoria, joined the colony and 
there ended his days. 

A few days after the final massacre, a party of Peoria 
traders, while returning from Canada, observed a cloud 
of buzzards hovering above the rock and perceived a 
sickening odor. They climbed to the top of the rock 
seeing on every hand the signs of carnage but upon 
reaching the summit they were horrified at the sight pre- 
sented to view. With sorrow they hastily turned away 
and reembarking silently passed down the river to 
Peoria to convey to the colonists there the sad tidings 
of the death of a nation. 

Thus perished the tribe of Illinois Indians, only a 
few scattered remnants being left, and thus was the 
name '^Starved Rock" fixed forever upon that bold 
sandstone cliff rising up from the bank of the river, 
which attracted the attention of Marquette and chal- 
lenged the military instincts of La Salle. 

The red man no longer climbs its rugged pathway 
nor are there any evidences of military occupation. No 
flag floats from its rocky bastions nor does any cannon 
frown down upon the quiet waters of the river below. 
Even the fur trader and the *' black robes" of the 
forest have passed away forever but still beside the 
river, overlooking the meadows upon which Hennepin 
counted four hundred sixty lodges, this silent sentinel 
stands as it did then the one prominent irregularity in 
the river scenery. 

235 



CHAPTER XXIII 

A LAND FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY 

When Joliet and Marquette pushed their canoes up 
the Illinois river on their return voyage from the Miss- 
issippi we remember that the Good Father wrote in his 
diary that they had seen nothing equal to the valley of 
the Illinois, ' ' as to its fertility of soil, its prairie and its 
woods; its cattle, elk, deer and bustards, ducks and 
beavers." These were only a part of nature's blessings 
bestowed upon this favored region. Since the coming of 
the white man the gifts of nature have been utilized and 
the great industrial forces have been marshaled to com- 
pete for the markets of the world. 

The primary and essential industry in all times must 
be agriculture. Bread and meat are necessary for exis- 
tence. The farmer is the one upon whose broad shoulders 
rests the whole superstructure of civilization. Of about 
33,000,000 acres of land in Illinois there are about 
28,000,000 acres, 85 per cent, in actual cultivation. The 
census tables of 1900 show that Illinois ranked first 
among all the states in the value of her crops. Wheat, 
oats, corn, hay, rye, barley, and the smaller fruits and 
vegetables are grown in all parts of the state, while in 
apple orchards the state ranks third. 

When we get below the hoe and the plow we find the 
great underlying strata of coal covering an area of about 
37,000 square miles. Out of one hundred and two 

236 



FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY 

counties in the state, coal is found in fifty-four. There 
are almost one thousand mines in active operation and 
the annual product reaches the enormous sum of about 
40,000,000 tons. We have coal enough under our feet 
to keep all the furnaces of the world going for gen- 
erations. 

The coming of the railroads alone made possible the 
development of the farms and the opening of coal mines. 
Without means for transportation the most prodigal 
returns from the soil and the output of the mines would 
be of little value. To these great networks of steel rails 
with their puffing, rumbling trains of freight cars we 
must give much of the credit for the prosperity and 
comforts we enjoy. The railroad corporations have not 
been slow upon their part to see the opportunities for 
getting wealth by moving and distributing the products 
of the state. We have had the story of the long struggle 
which brought the first roads into use. Since that the 
number has increased until it is difficult to enumerate 
them. Chicago has become the greatest railroad center 
in the world. The total miles of railroad tracks now in 
use in the state is approximately 12,000, with yearly 
increases. The wages paid to employes upon these 
roads reach the startling sum of about $74,000,000 a 
year. The number of people employed by these roads 
in the state, 116,000, surpasses the muster roll in many 
European, armies. 

In manufacturing industries Illinois has developed so 
rapidly that she is in a fair way within a very few years 
to take her place at the head of all the states. She now 
leads in the manufacture of agricultural implements, 
steam cars, distilled liquors, watches, the meat packing 
products and several minor articles. In the manufac- 

237 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

ture of furniture, clothing and soaps only one state 
surpasses her. In the production of steel and iron only 
Pennsylvania and Ohio lead her. Besides these great 
industries there are numberless smaller, but important 
plants from which come train loads of wagons, carriages, 
buckets, locomotives, flour, chemicals, leather and other 
products. It is a busy state and the smoke of one 
factory may be seen from the windows of another in 
continuous succession from Waukegan to Cairo. 

The center of manufacturing interests is rapidly shift- 
ing toward the West, and Chicago is about to become 
the greatest manufacturing city in the United States. 
She is now admittedly second in rank, being surpassed 
by New York" alone, and it is possible that the census 
now in progress may place her first. To give the list 
of industries carried on in this great city by the lake 
would be to catalogue the entire group of manufactured 
products. The number of factories and the value of 
their products have more than doubled during the past 
ten years. Everything that can be done with iron is 
done in this state. Hundreds of cars every day bring 
in their burdens of crude ore and carry out manu- 
factured goods in the form of rods, nails, wire, sheet 
iron, shovels, scrapers, plows, harvesters, threshing ma- 
chines, car wheels, engines, railroad and street car rails 
— in short, every kind of an implement or tool of which 
iron forms a part. The group of iron mills, including 
the Waukegan, Chicago, Joliet and DeKalb plants, is 
scarcely second to the great Pittsburg iron industries. 
Chicago is the home of the Harvester, and the plants 
for making the most improved farming implements of 
all kinds cover acres of her territory. Rock river is 
one of the most beautiful streams in the West, and 

238 



FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY 

one of the most valuable water powers. From its 
source in Wisconsin to its mouth below Rock Island it 
is marked by manufacturing and milling plants. Rock- 
ford, Oregon, Dixon, Sterling, with their large and 
growing plants, are all on this stream, while near its 
mouth are Moline and Rock Island, made up almost 
entirely of mills and shops and factories. From Elgin 
come the world-famous Elgin watches, and bicycles; 
from Dixon, boots and shoes; from Ottawa, glass 
products, organs and pianos; from La Salle, zinc, glass, 
cement and tile. We might go on thus, enumerating 
city after city with its peculiar products until we had 
filled pages of this book, and the half would not then 
be told. 

With all this development of factory life has come a 
great increase in the number of people that have made 
their homes in the large towns and cities. When our 
present constitution went into effect the population of 
Illinois was about two and a half millions. It is now 
about five millions. Then about one-seventh of the total 
population was gathered in Cook County; now about 
two-fifths is in Cook County. All the languages of the 
earth may be heard in this great cosmopolitan city by 
the lake. More than seventy-five per cent of the chil- 
dren of Chicago have foreign born fathers and mothers. 
Greece and Italy, Russia, China and Japan, Norway, 
Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland have 
emptied out from their crowded borders the shiploads 
of restless humanity that have sought shelter, employ- 
ment and homes in this great city. 

The press and the school have striven hard to keep 
pace with the growing population and the rapid indus- 
trial developments. There are published in the state 
16 239 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

nearly eighteen hundred papers and magazines reaching 
an aggregate of over 10,000,000 copies per issue. What 
a world of — knowledge ! 

The public schools have increased until they enroll a 
million pupils with twenty-eight thousand teachers 
with an increasing roster every year. The total ex- 
penditure for all these schools is about $23,000,000 
per year. Besides the public schools there are over 
sixty incorporated schools and colleges and thousands 




Bernard Moos School. — A Typical Chicago School Building. 

of private schools, unnumbered and unrecorded, all 
working at the selfsame problem, — the spreading of 
greater intelligence and a better morality among the 
people of the state. 

Surely this is a state of which one may be proud. It 
is well worth while to be one of the 5,000,000 citizens of 
Illinois. It is an inheritance worth fighting for, worth 
dying for. So thought our fathers, who came from 
their homes in great companies and regiments, every 
county furnishing its contingent, to follow Grant 

240 



FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY 

through swamp and forest in the Mississippi campaign, 
to march with Sherman to the sea, to lay their broken 
bodies in the valleys or upon the hillsides of the sunny 
south that we, their children, might have a country, one 
and undivided. And so their sons would do to-day did 
an occasion call for a similar sacrifice. 

ILLINOIS 

By thy rivers gently flow^ing, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
O'er thy prairies, verdant growing, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Comes an echo on the breeze, 
Rustling through the leafy trees. 
And its mellow tones are these, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
And its mellow tones are these, 

Illinois, Illinois. 

O'er wilderness of prairies, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Straight thy way and never varies, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Till upon the inland sea 
Stands Chicago, great and free. 
Turning all the world to thee, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Turning all the world to thee. 

Illinois, Illinois. 

When you heard your country calling, 
Illinois, Illinois, 
241 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

When the shot and shell were falling, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
When the Southern host withdrew. 
Pitting Gray against the Blue, 
There were none more brave than you, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
There were none more brave than you, 

Illinois, Illinois. 

Not without thy wondrous story, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Can be writ the Nation's glory, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
On the record of the years, 
Abr'am Lincoln's name appears. 
Grant and Logan and our tears, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Grant and Logan and our tears, 

Illinois, Illinois. 



CHAPTER XXIY 

A WORD IN CONCLUSION 

We have come to the end of our stories. In the 
preceding pages we have had before us in outline the 
history of Illinois from the time when the Indian and 
buffalo roamed over its prairies and plashed through 
its streams unseen and unknown by the white man, until 
it has taken its place as third in population in the 
great sisterhood of states. We have seen Chicago, the 
camping place of the fur trader, the lonely winter home 
of the dying missionary, the scene of a bloody massacre 
when not more than a half dozen roofs rose above its 
sand hills, grow into a mighty city, second in population 
and industrial enterprises among all the cities of the 
Union. We have watched the counties come one by one, 
until they increased from the single district outlined 
by St. Clair to one hundred and two counties, all rich 
and prosperous. 

We have watched the changes in laws and the growth 
of constitutions from the time when English laws and 
English juries first made their appearance in the valley 
of the Mississippi until we find ourselves living under 
one of the best constitutions and in one of the best 
governed commonwealths in America. 

We have had a few glimpses of the trials and priva- 
tions of the early settlers who first plowed our prairie 
lands, drained our swamps and felled our forests, and, 

243 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

knowing something of these, we have come to appreciate 
more highly the opportunities and comforts that sur- 
round us. 

Our stories were nearly told before we found a rail- 
road in the Illinois country, but when we look at a map 
of the state now we see Chicago, Peoria, Decatur, Dan- 
ville, Freeport, and many other cities, appearing as hubs 
in wheels surrounded by radiating spokes which reach 
out and out, covering the entire surface of the state 
with a network of iron rails. 

Illinois is not old in years, yet when she came into the 
family in 1818 there were no sewing machines to make 
her garments ; there were no mowing machines to reap 
her harvests ; there were no matches to light her candles, 
nor kerosene to fill her lamps. The telegraph, the 
electric light, the telephone, the typewriter and the 
steam locomotive were as undreamed of as are the 
mysteries of the unknown future to-day. 

How did our fathers live in those days? We can 
never know in full, but, seeing dimly through the 
occasional records left behind, we can imagine that their 
lives were strong and vigorous, not all filled with sor- 
row and tears, but having in them much of joy and 
sweetness. They lived up to their opportunities, setting 
an example which challenges us to our utmost endeavor 
t^ measure up to the standard they have left. 

Should these stories inspire some of the boys and girls 
who read them to seek for fuller sources of information, 
to strive for a high type of usefulness in the city and the 
state, to a larger view of life and a desire for a noble 
manhood or womanhood, no matter what the station 
may be, the purpose of their writing will be fully 
justified. 

244 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

1666 — Marquette arrives at Quebec. 
1669 — Marquette on Lake Superior. 
1672 — Joliet reaches St. Ignace. 

1673 — Joliet and Marquette on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. 
1674-5 — Marquette spends winter on Chicago river. 
1675 — Marquette establishes the Mission of the Immaculate Con- 
ception among the Kaskaskias. 
1675 — Marquette dies on the shore of Lake Michigan. 
1678 — La Salle at Niagara. 
1679 — ^La Salle on the St. Joseph river. 
1680 — La Salle on the Illinois with Tonti. 
1682 — La Salle reaches the mouth of the Mississippi. 
1683 — La Salle in France. 

1684 — La Salle sails for the mouth of the Mississippi. 
1687 — La Salle assassinated in Texas. 
1699— d'Iberville on the Gulf. 

1700 — Tonti and the Kaskaskia Indians leave "The Rock." 
1704 — Bienville governor of Louisiana. 
1710 — Vincennes established. 
1712 — Crozat receives a grant of Louisiana. 
1717 — ^Law's Mississippi scheme formed. 
1718 — New Orleans laid out. 
1718— Ft. Chartres built. 

1720 — Renault brings five hundred slaves to Illinois. 
1722 — The Mississippi Bubble bursts. 
1748 — The Ohio Company formed. 
1753 — Washington sent to warn the French. 
1754 — French and Indian war begins. 
1754 — Washington surrenders Ft. Necessity. 
1756 — Ft. Chartres rebuilt. 
1758 — Ft. Massac established by the French. 
1763 — The French claims ceded to the English. 

245 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

1765 — The English take possession of Illinois. 

1772 — Ft. Chartres destroyed by the Mississippi. 

1774 — The Quebec bill passed. 

1775 — The Revolutionary War begins. 

1778-9 — George Rogers Clark conquers the Illinois country. 

1782 — New Design settled by Americans. 

1783-7-All the territory to the Mississippi becomes the property of 
the United States. 

1784-6 — Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut cede their west- 
ern territory to the government. 

1787 — The Ordinance for the Northwest Territory. 

1790 — St. Clair county organized. 

1795 — Public Records removed from Cahokia to Kaskaskia. 

1804 — Ft. Dearborn, Chicago, established. 

1809 — Illinois territory organized; Ninian Edwards, Governor. 

1812 — Ft. Dearborn massacre (August 15). 

1812 — First territorial legislature meets at Kaskaskia. 

1812 — Organized counties increased to five. 

1812 — Shadrach Bond elected as delegate to Congress. 

1812 — Fort Dearborn Massacre. 

1813 — Preemption act for Illinois passed by Congress. 

1817 — The first steamboat on the Mississippi above Cairo. 

1818 — Enabling act passed for Illinois. 

1818 — Shadrach Bond elected to be the first governor. 

1818 — Illinois formally admitted to statehood (December 3). 

1820 — Removal of state offices to Vandalia. 

1822-4 — Slavery agitation. 

1825 — The first attempt at a school law. 

1825 — General LaFayette visits Illinois. 

1826 — The first steamboat on the Illinois river. 

1827 — Congress makes a grant of land for the Illinois and Michi- 
gan canal. 

1832— The Black Hawk War. 

1833- — Chicago incorporated. 

1837 — Springfield becomes the state capital. 

1837 — Elijah P. Lovejoy assassinated. 

1838 — First locomotive in Illinois on the Northern Cross R. R. 

1839 — Northern Cross Railroad built by the state. 

1840 — The Mormons came to the state. 

246 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

1844 — Joseph Smith killed in Carthage jail. 

1846 — The Mormons expelled from the state. 

1846 — Abraham Lincoln elected to Congress. 

1848 — Illinois and Michigan canal completed. 

1848 — The second State Constitution adopted. 

1850 — Congressional land grant for the Illinois Central Railroad. 

1851 — The Illinois Central Railroad Company incorporated. 

1853— State debt at its maximum, $16,724,177. 

1854 — State legislature establishes the office of State Superintend- 
ent of Public Instruction. 

1855 — Education law passed; basis of the present law. 

1857 — Building of the penitentiary at Joliet. 

1857 — State Normal University established. 

1858 — The Lincoln-Douglas debates. 

1860 — Lincoln nominated for the presidency at Chicago. 

1861 — U. S. Grant take« command at Cairo (September 4). 

1861 — Death of Stephen A. Douglas. 

1864 — Lincoln re-elected. 

1865 — Illinois ratified the 13th Amendment. 

1865 — Lincoln assassinated, April 14th. 

1865 — Lincoln buried at Springfield (May 5). 

1867 — Illinois University established. 

1868 — U. S. Grant nominated at Chicago. 

1870 — The third State Constitution adopted. 

1871 — Great fire in Chicago. 

1873 — Women allowed to hold office under the school law and to 
vote for school officers. 

1875 — The New State House occupied. 

1886 — Riot at Haymarket Square, Chicago. 

1889 — Establishment of Chicago Sanitary District. 

1891 — Australian ballot system adopted. 

1891 — Chicago University opened. 

1892-3— The World's Fair, Chicago. 

1899 — Juvenile Court Act adopted. 

1900 — Chicago Drainage Canal opened (January 2). 

1901 — The new apportionment gives Illinois twenty-five congress- 
men. 

1903 — Ft. Massac Purchased by the State. 

1903 — Iroquois Theatre fire, Chicago, Dec. 30; 591 deaths. 

247 



ILLINOIS HISTORY STORIES 

1905 — Municipal Court law adopted. 

1907 — State Flower — Native violet — adopted by Legislature. 

1909 — Cherry mine disaster at Cherry; over 300 killed (Nov. 12). 

1909 — Special session of Legislature to pass a primary election 
law. 

1909 — Ella Flagg Young elected to Superintendency of the Chi- 
cago Schools. The most responsible educational posi- 
tion ever given to a woman in this country. 



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